Magic & Mead
by ninepen
Summary: Thor (15) is singled out by Odin and Loki (14) isn't sure what to make of it. Long before things sour, the brothers enjoy some laughter and endure some pain as Loki tries to figure out who he is and how he fits into his family. There's some mischief and some hugs, a little magic and a little mead. Okay, a lot of mead. [Rated T solely for the mead. Directly related to "Beneath."]
1. Ranka & Rods

_Although directly related to my main story, _Beneath_, per the summary, this story can be read entirely on its own, as of course can _Beneath_. They are the same characters in the same universe, but one story does not depend on the other. It's complete now, but of course I still welcome and will respond to reviews. If you're coming along "after the fact" and read both stories, actually I'd be interested to hear your reactions to how (if at all) reading one first affected how you read the other, whichever you read first.  
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_The please-nobody-sue-me part: I have no claims to anything in the Marvel universe. I make no profit off this. I am grateful to all those who gave us_ Thor_ and _The Avengers_ which provide such an amazing canvas on which we can paint our own imaginations._**  
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_M & M  
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**Magic & Mead**

**Chapter One: Ranka & Rods**

"Let's take a rowboat down the Vina River and have lunch on that little island with the pear tree," Thor said, grabbing his satchel with his lunch.

"It's too far," Loki said. "We'd never make it back on time for our afternoon classes."

"We've had a lot of rain. The river's running fast. It won't take any time at all."

"But we have to come back, too, Thor. You'd have to carry the boat all the way back." He didn't bother saying _we_, he knew he wouldn't be much help with such a task.

"I can do it," Thor said defensively, his back straightening.

"I know you can do it. But you can't do it _fast_ enough to keep us out of trouble."

Thor looked as exasperated as he always did when Loki poked holes in his plans, as though he thought Loki was doing it just to annoy him. "Well, can't you just…make the river run the opposite direction when we're ready to come back?"

Loki rolled his eyes. "Why don't I just make time itself stand still while we're gone?"

"You can do that?" Thor asked, wide-eyed. "That would be perfect!" He turned toward the classroom door.

Loki kicked him behind his right knee and he went sprawling on the rough-hewn stone floor.

"Hey, what was that for?" Thor demanded, back on his feet in an instant and taking a half-hearted, poorly aimed swing at his younger brother.

Loki easily stepped out of the way, laughing. He pushed past Thor and picked his satchel up from the floor, handing it back to him. "Don't be stupid. I can't make time stand still or rivers run backward. If you want a pear, why don't we just go have lunch in that clearing out behind the palace? There are at least a dozen pear trees there."

"I don't care about the pears." He punched Loki in the shoulder, lightly for Thor, but already enough to make Loki stumble forward a couple of steps. "We just haven't been to that island in a long time and I thought it would be fun to-"

The boys had reached the door to the room that served as their classroom. An Einherjar guard – Jolgeir – stood in the corridor blocking their exit. There was always at least one guard somewhere in the princes' vicinity, but their presence was unobtrusive and often difficult to detect without serious searching. They made themselves known only when they needed to be, which was not often.

"My prince," he began, bowing his head before Thor. "The All-Father requires that you go to his official study as soon as your lessons are over for the day." He stood straight again, looking only at Thor, as if Loki did not even exist.

"What about Loki?" Thor asked, his face paling slightly.

"His Majesty has asked only for Prince Thor."

Thor nodded; Jolgeir bowed and stepped to the side.

"What did you do?" Loki whispered once they'd gotten far enough down the corridor to be out of earshot.

Thor shook his head. He was staring down at feet. "I don't know. I can't think of anything. I broke a vase two days ago when I was practicing with my sword on the spiral stairs."

"You break things all the time. You've never been called to the throne room for it."

"I can't think of anything else…unless it was something a long time ago that he just found out about." Thor froze in his tracks and spun around to face his younger brother. "You don't think he knows about us going to Sv-"

"Shhhh! No. Besides, if he did, I'd be getting into as much trouble as you. More," Loki said with a grimace. He had hidden them from Heimdall on their adventure to Svartalfheim, a month earlier, his first serious test of that newly learned ability. It had been a complete success – if it hadn't, they would have known about it the minute they emerged through the mystical hidden portal back on Asgard.

Thor's frown deepened. "Well, we better not go to that island. Whatever it is, I can't afford to get into any more trouble."

"Why don't we go to the practice grounds?" Loki suggested. "We can pick up a couple of rods and practice before lunch."

"Oh…yeah, okay," Thor said, distracted and barely listening.

The young princes backtracked toward the storage room where all of their practice equipment was stored, then continued out of the palace in uncharacteristic silence. Loki knew his idea was a good one. Fighting would distract Thor. And Loki was terrible with the rods, probably his worst weapon out of all they'd trained with. Soundly defeating Loki would improve Thor's mood.

Nearly an hour later the brothers sat under the shade of a tall oak tree munching on sandwiches of cold meats and cheeses.

"I think you did a little better this time," Thor said with his mouth full.

"You don't have to say that. I know I'm hopeless with the rods." Loki rubbed his bruised shoulder. He would have a lot of bruises from this bout; Thor had only a scratched palm from one time Loki had managed to sweep his feet and knock him down briefly.

"You just don't swing it with enough conviction."

"Because I'm afraid you're going to break every bone in my fingers!"

"That only happened once. And I got you to the Healing Room right away. You're not still mad about it, are you?"

"No," Loki said with a shrug. It wasn't as though Thor had done it on purpose. Loki had thrust the rod horizontally toward Thor's chest with his fingers improperly positioned, and Thor had blocked the blow with all his considerable strength straight on, his rod lining up with and smashing into Loki's and crushing all of Loki's fingers between them except his thumbs. Loki had stumbled backward and Thor had knocked him to the ground and pinned him there with a heavy blow to the chest, not yet aware of what had happened. Loki struggled to breathe from shock and the strike to his chest, and it wasn't until Thor reached down for his hand to pull him up and Loki screamed with pain that ripped through the shock that Thor realized how badly hurt Loki was. Thor never lacked conviction in anything he did. Loki was sure it was going to get him into trouble someday.

"So what really happened between you and Ranka?" Thor asked in between his first and second sandwiches.

Loki swallowed a bite of apple he hadn't quite thoroughly chewed. "What do you mean? I told you, we had a fight."

"That's not what I heard," Thor said. He bit into his sandwich and stared hard at Loki until the raven-haired boy looked away.

He sighed and frowned. "Ranka can't keep her mouth shut."

"So it's true?"

"How should I know? What did you hear?" Loki asked reluctantly.

"That she tried to kiss you and you shoved her away and yelled at her."

Thor was grinning at him and Loki balled his fists against a sudden impulse to hit his older brother until he stopped grinning. "It wasn't like that." He looked down at his hands, uncurling the fingers. He had loved the feeling of Ranka's soft hand in his. Had thrilled to the warm weight of her head against his shoulder as they sat on the grass in a secluded garden and watched hummingbirds drinking nectar. Had wanted to throw a dagger at Thor's shin when he found them there and started teasing and, worse yet, Ranka had giggled at Thor's antics and seemed to bask in his attention. From then on, especially whenever Thor was around them, Loki had never felt certain which brother she was really interested in.

"So, what was it like, then?" Thor asked a few bites later.

"I fell asleep on the hillside. And suddenly I woke up and she was leaning over me blocking out the sun and her lips were touching mine. It…it kind of scared me."

Thor stared at Loki, his jaw falling still. Then he burst out laughing.

"Stop," Loki said quietly, his cheeks burning with embarrassment.

Thor only laughed harder, and then started choking on the bite of sandwich still in his mouth. Loki gave him a hard shove to the shoulder and he toppled over, coughing out his half-chewed food, then continued right on laughing until he was gasping for air and clutching his stomach. Loki stood up and gave him a swift kick to the rear, making no effort to be gentle about it.

"Ow," Thor said, wincing as he rolled back into a sitting position. "You," he began, still short of breath, laughter still in his voice, "were scared because a girl…wanted…to kiss you?"

"I was just…startled, that's all. I was asleep! And when I opened my eyes all I could see was her face."

"So you shoved her away?"

Loki scowled. It had been humiliating enough when it was just between him and Ranka. Now to think all of Asgard was hearing this story… "'Shoved' is a strong word. I may have pushed her a little. I didn't mean to, it was just reflex. And then she ran off."

"And then you went running straight to Mother's arms?" Thor asked, breaking out in fresh laughter.

"I did not! Cut it out, Thor." He kicked a rock at his brother; it struck him in the arm.

"_You_ cut it out. You're going to send me to the Healing Room. And then I'd have to miss history," Thor said, sticking out his tongue.

"You know what Mother said about sticking-"

"What are you going to do, tattle? Sit back down, Brother."

Loki forced one last angry breath out his nose before settling back down beside Thor.

"Don't get mad. It's funny. You have to admit it's funny." Thor was smiling, but he wasn't making fun anymore. Not that the distinction seemed too great to Loki.

"I do not," Loki said, picking up his apple.

"Well, trust me, it is. Just next time a girl kisses you, if one is ever brave enough to try" – Loki snorted at this and imagined loosing a dozen daggers into Thor's laughing body – "don't push her away."

"Like you're such an expert," Loki muttered under his breath, just loud enough for Thor to hear.

Thor narrowed his eyes but didn't respond. Although less than a year older, Thor very much enjoyed acting the big brother, including dispensing advice, but they told each other everything and Loki knew Thor had only ever kissed Birna's hand and Hervor's cheek. Asgard, they both already understood, was home to many contrasts, including a formal modesty and a certain degree of licentiousness, and the young princes were aware of the eyes upon them and the higher standards they were held to in all things, from how one behaved at the dinner table to how one treated a lady. Loki honestly wasn't sure if he'd be more embarrassed for everyone to know that he'd kissed a girl or that he'd pushed away one who tried to kiss him. And besides, why would he want to kiss her in the first place when he wondered if she'd rather be kissing Thor?

"Forget about her," Thor finally said, letting Loki's snub pass, knowing it sprang only from his younger brother's embarrassment. "Who would want to kiss someone when he's asleep, anyway? That's weird."

"I don't want to talk about it anymore." Loki reached into the lunchbag he'd carried in his satchel and pulled out his second sandwich. "Here," he said, holding it out to Thor, who took it and bit in. Loki almost always gave half his lunch to Thor, and despite how much Thor ate, every pound he gained was muscle; in the last year every remaining bit of a child's roundness on him had already also turned to muscle. Loki couldn't remember his own frame being any different than it was now, thin and wiry, and only a half an inch taller than Thor now that Thor had gained ground on the height advantage Loki'd had for a few years.

Thinking along similar lines, Thor launched into what had recently become one of his favorite big-brother lectures. "You should eat more, Brother," he began, taking a big bite out of Loki's sandwich. "You would gain more muscle that way. You're too thin."

"Mother says I'm perfectly healthy. And if you want me to eat more so badly, you should stop eating my lunch."

"Were you going to eat it?" Thor asked, mouth full, holding out Loki's sandwich.

"No."

Thor nodded and flashed a triumphant grin.

Loki rolled his eyes. He rarely won arguments with Thor, both because Thor's force of personality was so strong and because Thor ignored logic to such an extent that arguing a point was simply an exercise in futility – Thor would consider himself the victor over a point concerning a goat when they'd been arguing over a birch tree.

"You better hurry up and finish _my_ lunch or we're still going to be late for class."

Thor looked up to the sun; his eyes widened. He nodded and crammed the rest of the sandwich in his mouth, then grabbed his satchel and canister of water.

Loki stood up, held out his hand, and helped pull Thor up, biting back a reminder of what Mother said about shoveling food into your mouth. He couldn't restrain himself entirely, though. "Why did you end things with Hervor again, Brother?"

"She ate with her mouth open. It was disgusting," Thor said with his mouth full.

Loki laughed at his brother's seemingly complete oblivion. He took a step forward, toward the palace, but Thor put a hand on his shoulder and stopped him.

"Loki…thank you." Serious sky-blue eyes fixed on Loki's gray-blue eyes.

"For what?"

"For distracting me. I know you did it on purpose. And I hardly thought about it at all, until just now. So, thank you."

"You're welcome," Loki said. "Luckily you're extremely easy to distract," he added, but for all his teasing, he knew Thor wasn't half as dumb as he accused him of being. Or as oblivious.

"If only history could be so distracting," Thor said glumly as the brothers resumed their walk back to the palace.

"Don't you remember? We're starting a modern history unit today – the war against Jotunheim. You'll like that."

"Oh, that's right! That should be fun. It won't be as good as when Father tells us about it, though. I like his stories best."

"Me, too," Loki agreed, fondly recalling the times when they were younger and their father would take them to see the Ice Casket, or the tapestries in the west hall, or the bifrost observatory, take one of their hands in one of his and regale his wide-eyed sons with stories of the greatness of Asgard. Their own father – just a father and yet so much more – had convinced the Vanir to lay down their weapons and recognize Asgard's ultimate sovereignty, quelled stirrings of aggression on Alfheim, Niflheim, and Svartalfheim, and, most enthralling for the boys, thoroughly defeated the warmongering Frost Giants on both Midgard and Jotunheim. There was no better history teacher in all the realms than the one who had done all these things himself.

"Come on, we better run," Loki said, taking off.

"Wait up!" Thor called, picking up his pace and breaking into a lumbering run.

With three sandwiches, an apple, and most of his water in his stomach, he struggled to keep up, even when Loki slowed and waved him on. Before long he was pressing a hand to his side, and Loki laughed and taunted him all the way back to the classroom.

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_M & M_

_In the next chapter, Loki and Frigga sweetness.  
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_If you're ever interested in how this story came into existence, please read the _Magic & Mead_ section of my profile page._

_If you're reading both Beneath and _M&M_, you may note that chapters here are shorter and the plotting is less complex. There are some dramatic moments, but this story is not ultimately about dramatic moments. __It's about these brothers dealing with what would be for them fairly typical bumps and stumbles along the way to growing up...with some glimpses of how things could have gone so wrong. Some of this is fairly subtle, bonus points to you for picking up on all the little subtle clues. As in real life, no one in this story is perfect. If you're reading _Beneath_, a few passages in _Magic & Mead___ will look familiar, though not quite word-for-word._  


_Allow me to take a moment to be super-responsible and put in a warning. This story involves - among other things - consumption of strong alcohol by teenaged boys. These teenaged boys are making a mistake. But you would be making a far worse one if you did what they do, teenager or not. They are Asgardian (well...one of them is anyway, but don't tell the other, he doesn't know about that yet). You are Midgardian. Their bodies are much stronger than yours. I will put an additional warning on one or two particular chapters. Please forgive me if I sound too preachy. But if you did what happens in this story, you would probably be dead, okay?_

_A "world-building" note: For my own purposes I had to come up with an explanation for the "they look 28 but they're 1,000" thing that didn't involve them being toddlers for 200 years...because that's just weird. We humans already mature at a really slow rate compared to other mammals. So my take on it is that they mature at the same rate as humans for about 10 years, then their growth begins to slow relative to us until about 20, at which point it really slows. So if Thor is 15, maturationally in human terms he's probably about 14. Not a huge deal, then, but there are references to the 10th and 20th birthday milestones that are taken for granted and not particularly explained in the story._

_Whew. With all that out of the way, I hope you have enjoyed this chapter. Your reviews/comments/questions are always welcome, and if the PM function is there, I'll respond. I love chatting about these characters. I do promise not to take up half the word count with Author's Notes from here on out!_


	2. Ladies & Lies, Wars & Why's

**Magic & Mead**

**Chapter Two: Ladies & Lies, Wars & Why's**

When their afternoon classes ended, and their last tutor departed, Thor dawdled, collecting each book one by one. Loki waited at the door for him, and grasped his hand when he finally got there. In childhood their hands had been almost permanently clasped, and though the gesture had become much less common as they'd grown older it was still occasionally a natural and welcome mark of affection and encouragement. Thor squeezed Loki's hand and stepped out of the classroom and into the corridor that, twists and turns and two flights of stairs later, would bring him to their father's official study directly off the throne room.

Loki watched him go, admiring his strength and hoping it wouldn't be anything too bad. When Thor disappeared around the corner, he decided to go see his mother.

He checked first in his parents' chambers, but a guard told him she had gone to her receiving room. When he arrived there, Loki pushed the door open slowly and entered hesitantly. Mother's receiving room was not used for particularly formal occasions, but still Loki did not wish to intrude.

"Who's there?" his mother called from the far right side of the room, not visible from his position, at the sound of the door as it closed behind him.

He stepped further into the room, past the polished marble columns and into view of his mother, sitting on a small cushioned wooden settee carved with ancient patterns and runic inscriptions. A woman vaguely familiar to him sat in a similarly styled chair opposite, her neck straining to see who had entered.

"Loki, come in. Do you remember Lady Halla of Vanaheim? She is an old friend."

"I beseech you, Frigga, mind your turn of speech," Halla chided with a stern expression.

Not used to hearing people address the queen in such a way, Loki glanced nervously at his mother, but she merely smiled.

"Come on in, dear, I don't bite. I'm sure you don't remember me, it's been years."

Loki recovered his manners and approached the visitor, who stood and curtsied when he reached her. In turn he took her hand and kissed it.

"My, my, Frigga, such a lovely young man you've raised," she said, her eyes never leaving Loki. She ruffled his hair and Loki fought to maintain his smile; he hated being treated like a child.

"Actually, Lady Halla, I do remember you. I'm glad you could come visit my mother."

"Why, thank you, so am I. And where is your eldest?" Halla asked, taking her seat again and turning to Frigga.

"If he's done as he was told, he's with his father," she said, then beckoned to Loki. "Come sit here by me."

Loki settled beside his mother, careful to keep his back straight, his feet still, and his hands crossed over one leg. The women chatted for several more minutes about a mutual friend he had never heard of, before Lady Halla declared she wanted to rest before dinner and excused herself, insisting Frigga keep her seat.

When they were alone, Frigga looked down at Loki and he up at her, and she smiled warmly. She shifted her position a little to her left and pulled Loki into her, wrapping her left arm around him and squeezing his chest. Loki sighed and leaned against her.

"You were perfectly behaved, Loki. I'm very proud of you."

"Thank you, Mother."

She put her right hand underneath his chin, nudging it upward as she bent down to look closely into his eyes from above him. "Do you really remember Halla?"

"No. She looked familiar."

Frigga released his chin and stroked his cheek twice before letting her right hand rest on his shoulder. She breathed into his dark hair light, quiet laughter that could melt the iciest of hearts, then kissed the top of his head. "Don't lie, Loki. Sometimes it seems the easier path, but there are often consequences. It would have been embarrassing for you if she'd discovered you were lying."

"Yes, Mother. I'm sorry," he said, but he could tell she wasn't really upset and he felt too warm and safe in her arms to think much about some hypothetical consequences or embarrassment. His mother and Lady Halla both had been pleased with his behavior and that was all that mattered.

"She was here for Thor's tenth birthday celebration."

_Her and half the Nine Realms_, Loki thought, not at all surprised then that he couldn't really remember her.

"What did you do today?" she asked a few minutes later.

"We recited our poems that we had to do for homework."

"Yours was on the Grand Falls?"

He nodded.

"And how did you do?"

He shrugged. "Ulfid wants me to work on the rhyme some more and present it again tomorrow." Poetry wasn't his best subject. He was good with language, but he didn't see the point to all the associated formalisms of poetry – rhyme and meter and symbolism and parallelism and all the other _isms_.

"What else?"

"Thor and I practiced with rods during our lunch break."

"Hands!" Frigga exclaimed, straightening up and bumping Loki forward.

"Mo-ther," he whined.

"Hands," she repeated, and put her hands out in front of him, palms toward them.

He sighed and placed his palms against hers. She ran her thumbs gently over his fingers, and he knew she was looking as well as feeling for broken bones. She squeezed his uninjured hands, then settled back into her previous semi-reclining position, Loki again relaxing against her.

"We started studying the Ice War," Loki said, the words tumbling out before she could attempt any more babying of non-existent injuries. He and Thor brought home plenty of wounds, and while she fretted over them both it seemed she thought every scratch on her younger son's body could spell his doom. Even now, though, when he protested the coddling, a part of him secretly relished the extra attention and concern.

"Hmm," she said. "You and Thor should both excel in those lessons."

Loki nodded. "I already knew most of what Vigulf told us. And we have to memorize the first verse of Bragi's Ice Saga for tomorrow, but we both already know it by heart. At least I think Thor already knows it, too."

"I imagine so," she said with a laugh. "You've both grown up hearing Bragi sing it at plenty of feasts."

"Mother…do you know much about the war?"

"As much as anyone who didn't fight in it, I suppose. Why do you ask?"

"Well, when Vigulf started telling us about the beginning of the war, he jumped right to Jotunheim's first attack on Midgard, and he showed us maps and pictures of what Midgard looks like and how the Frost Giants used the Ice Casket to freeze the land and everything on it. How they killed the people and destroyed their towns."

"That sounds accurate," his mother said, her right hand sliding down his arm to take hold of his hand.

"But that's not the beginning."

"What do you mean?"

"That's the _what_. And the _where_ and the _who_ and the _how_. But it's not the beginning. There has to be a _why_ in the beginning. _Why_ did the Frost Giants attack Midgard?" He had asked Vigulf, but Vigulf had prevaricated and evaded the question, whether because he did not know or because he was unwilling to discuss it, Loki could not tell.

Behind him, Loki could feel his mother take a deep breath, leaning as he was against her chest. He knew she didn't like talking about the war, but he didn't know how he was supposed to understand a war without understanding why it started. Everyone knew the Frost Giants were monsters, but even monsters had to have a reason to launch an attack one day rather than the next, he figured.

"Mother? Don't you know?"

She sighed into his hair. "I'm sorry, Son. I suppose I don't. But you are truly wise beyond your years to ask. Perhaps your father knows the answer. I only know that the Frost Giants…the Jotuns…they were always troublesome. Mischievous and mysterious. A long time ago, before the Vanir and the Aesir became the allies that we are today, before even the Vanir-Aesir War, I remember that the Frost Giants destroyed vast tracts of fertile land in Vanaheim. They withdrew before it could turn to all-out war. And after that, they would appear from time to time, in different places, different realms, but always bringing trickery and chaos, and ultimately destruction. When they turned their eyes upon Midgard, where the people had no means of defending themselves, Odin had had enough. But I never knew why they did what they did. I'm not sure I ever even asked myself. I suppose we…we always simply assumed it was their nature."

Loki sat up and twisted around, having heard something change in his mother's voice. Her left hand fell away from his chest but her right remained clutching his. He stared up at her with wide eyes.

"That was wrong of us. We shouldn't have done that. We should have asked about the _why_. I'm sorry."

"Why are you crying?"

She quickly released his hand and dabbed at her eyes, glancing away as she did so. Then she leaned into him and pulled him into a fierce hug; he struggled to expand his lungs.

"Oh, my Loki. My sweet, sweet, darling boy. You cannot possibly understand how my heart nearly bursts with love for you, how much joy you bring me, how proud you make me. You know it's difficult for me to talk about that war. I didn't mean to get so emotional." She paused and released him from her crushing embrace; Loki gulped in air. Her arms were around his, still holding him close, her nose nearly touching his. "But I'm so glad you asked. I'm so proud of you for asking the things the rest of us don't. With wisdom like that you will do great things in life, my son."

She threw her arms around him again, and this time Loki sucked in a deep breath before her arms got all the way around him. Mothers were strange creatures, he thought. But he loved his desperately.

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_Thanks for reading! I would love to hear from you. (Yes, you!)_

_In the next chapter, Loki is really kind of naughty. Well, he didn't get that reputation for mischief for nothing!_


	3. Mysteries & Mouths

**Magic & Mead**

**Chapter Three: Mysteries & Mouths**

It wasn't until he was getting ready for the feast that night, tugging on the layers of the latest version of the green cloth and dark leather formal attire with which he'd been associated since his tenth birthday, that he remembered he'd meant to ask his mother about why Thor had been summoned to the throne room. She'd mentioned it, so it would have been easy to ask, but he'd forgotten about it somewhere along the way.

Before they left her receiving room, she had explained that there would be a feast in honor of the visitors from Vanaheim, including Halla, followed by an even grander feast in three days, splitting two full days of festivities celebrating the visit of Vanaheim's King Gullveig. It was all rather hastily arranged, she'd said. A trade dispute had broken out between the clothmakers' guilds of the two realms, and neither king was willing to allow it to fester. He had returned to his chambers to find the chambermaid had laid out the formal attire on his bed, and the bits of polished golden armor on the carved wooden bench at the foot of it. These embellishments he pulled on with something considerably less than enthusiasm – the think round band that hung around his neck, the bracers at his wrists and partway up his forearm, the circlets around his upper arms, around all of which the green cloth had to be arranged _just so_. It was heavy, and he knew it would leave him tired and grouchy by the end of the evening. And then he would have to go work on his rhymes.

"Falls, calls, balls, walls, halls…" he started muttering to himself as he pulled on his boots, the ones with the integrated armor. He tottered forward, then took a few bouncing steps in place to get used to the extra weight. For the first time he wondered if perhaps he _should_ be eating all of the lunch that was packed for him. And maybe he could start doing some kind of special exercises to build up his muscles, if they weren't going to just pop into existence almost like magic the way Thor's had. He decided to eat as much as he could at the feast tonight and to try to figure out who would be both most likely to be able to advise him about exercises and least likely to make fun of him for having asked. After all, more armor would be added every year until he reached twenty, when a ceremonial helmet that would likely measure in at half his current weight would be set atop his head, marking him as a young adult and making him stoop like an old man if he didn't do something about it before then.

When he reached the feasting hall, he spotted Thor, decked out in his own red cloth, dark leather, and silver armored formal attire. He was facing Loki, standing near the table talking to Hogun, a friend of Thor's who was a couple of years older and who sometimes sparred with them. As Loki approached and saw Thor gesturing as though he were gripping a fighting rod, he was mortified to realize Thor was recreating their entire bout from that afternoon. Loki had deliberately chosen his weakest weapon to make Thor feel better, not to give him stories to tell at the feast. He shoved Thor's shoulder harder than he'd initially intended to and Thor stumbled backward.

"We were talking!" Thor said in a near-shout as a few heads turned.

Loki kept pushing and Thor kept backpedaling, putting up only token resistance. "_You_ were talking," Loki pointed out, then called over his shoulder, "He'll finish that delightful story for you later, Hogun."

Hogun gave a small nod and otherwise watched impassively. He was quiet by nature, but he _never_ got involved when Thor and Loki argued.

"What's gotten into you?" Thor demanded when his back hit the far wall, behind Odin's empty seat. He gave Loki a shove of his own to the shoulder, then had to grab him by the arm to keep him from toppling under the weight of his garments that still had him slightly off-balance.

"What did Father want to see you about?"

Thor let go of his brother's arm. "Is _that_ what all this was about? Loki, you made a scene," he said, sounding the epitome of reason and maturity – and nothing like Thor.

"Since when are you worried about making scenes? Come on, tell me what happened. Are you in trouble?"

Thor shook his head and glanced beyond Loki, distracted. "No, it's nothing like that. Not really. They're about to announce Mother and Father. We need to get to our seats."

Loki frowned and twisted to see the crowd at the other end of the hall parting, and when he turned back to Thor he had already slipped away and was moving to stand behind his chair, to the right of his father's and across from his mother's. Annoyed, Loki followed and took his place at Thor's right just as the king and queen were announced. The hall fell silent as the couple crossed the length of the room. Once they sat, Loki and Thor and everyone else at the table followed suit. With no speeches forthcoming – signaled by Odin's having taken his seat – conversation among those at the table and those milling about resumed.

Loki spoke in polite but largely meaningless exchanges with a member of the Vanir delegation on his right through much of the first course, and then the toasts and storytelling and poetry began, carrying them through the rest of the courses. Loki ate until his stomach ached; his mother gave him a couple of odd looks, but if his father or brother noticed he was eating everything that was put on his plate and accepting seconds, they gave no indication. Thor was uncharacteristically restrained – not quiet per se, just contributing less to the entertainment than he normally did.

Some two hours after he had sat down, Odin stood, made a few brief remarks inviting everyone to linger and enjoy the evening, and himself walked halfway down the length of the table and engaged the senior-most Vanir, who rose from his chair, in conversation. Others began to rise and more intimate groupings formed. Loki hoped for another chance to talk with Thor, but stuffed as he was he was slow to rise and slightly unsteady on his feet again, and Thor had disappeared to the company of another Vanir by the time Loki was out of his seat and away from the table.

He circled the room aimlessly, unwilling to speak to anyone near his own age for fear of what stories they may have heard about him, and not feeling up to speaking with the adults. Then, in the corner most distant from where he had been sitting, he saw her, speaking in a lowered voice with a girl of a similar age he did not recognize. He recoiled for a moment, picturing Ranka's stupid exaggerated version of the story spreading all over two realms now. But he recovered, and marched straight up to the two girls, his back straight as a rod and stretched to his full height, as though his garments weighed no more than a sleeping tunic.

"Might I have the pleasure of your company?" he asked Ranka, ignoring her unknown friend.

She reflexively curtsied in response to his formal language, her loose light brown hair falling into her face. Her acknowledgement of who he was thrilled him in a way he'd never precisely experienced.

"Of course, Prince Loki," she said.

He led her out to the long side balcony in a silence, ordering the nearby guard to give them privacy. That was new, too – Loki had asked but never ordered any of the palace guards. The guard took up position in the entrance to the balcony and Loki led Ranka out to the far end where the view was of the smaller gardens and ponds behind the palace and the city beyond it.

"I understand you've been spreading rumors," he said in his most authoritative tone.

"No, Loki, I would never do that," she denied, shaking her head rapidly.

"Don't lie, Ranka. There are often consequences to lying."

She started to say something more, probably to again deny her guilt, but Loki stepped forward and pressed a finger to her lips, and she closed her mouth. Her lips were soft and warm and traitorous. He removed his finger and she stayed silent this time.

"True or false, you have been going around telling people that I was so scared of kissing you that I shoved you away."

Her jaw moved, but her lips did not part. She leaned her head slightly forward, worked her jaw, and still her mouth remained closed. Her eyes went wide, her fingers flew to her mouth and tried to pry her lips apart. She failed. She stared at Loki in fear and panic, little noises coming from her throat.

"You can nod if what I've said is true," he said helpfully.

Anger flashed in her eyes, mingling with the fear, but before long she nodded.

Loki nodded back to her in satisfaction. "That's going to stop. Now. In fact, when anyone asks about it, you're going to tell them you made it all up, that you just wanted to embarrass me. Understand?"

She was starting to breathe harder, and a tear was forming in one eye. She was so pitiful; he couldn't remember why he'd ever found her interesting. Again she nodded, her hands fisting the dark blue material of her gown.

"Don't you breathe a word of this to anyone, do you hear me? Otherwise I can make it permanent." It was an empty threat – he would never have gotten away with such a thing, and would be in terrible trouble if his parents heard about this…but she didn't know that.

She was nodding constantly now, and grabbed for his hand. He jerked it away, then sucked in a quick breath, remembering how much he'd liked the feel of her hand in his up until a few days ago. He clasped his hands behind his back and concentrated hard on her lips, one hand contracting slightly in the other.

"You can go now," he said when she kept standing there, unaware he had released the seal on her lips…or at least he hoped he had.

Her mouth popped open and her hands flew to cover it; Loki hoped she couldn't see his relief.

"But don't forget what you agreed. You made it all up, and this never happened."

She darted past him, putting herself between him and the entryway. "Loki Odinson, don't you ever come near me again. If you do I'll tell everyone how horrible and _creepy_ you are," she warned in a shaky voice.

"Don't worry," he said, and she turned and fled the length of the balcony and back into the banquet hall.

Loki turned his back to her retreating figure and leaned over the balcony. He let more and more of his weight rest on the smooth stone railing, until his chest was fully supported by it and his head hung limply on his neck. He started to shake, and anyone observing him from a distance would have guessed he was crying, but they would be wrong. It was laughter from deep inside that made him tremble over the rail. Laughter at Ranka's fear over such a harmless prank, laughter at how easily he'd gotten her to agree to his demands, laughter at his unplanned dramatic flourish when he'd pressed a finger to her lips, laughter at his own unwarranted self-doubt in his ability to undo what he'd done.

A groan broke through momentarily before laughter resumed, when he thought back to the first and only other time he'd tried out this new skill. Luckily for him, Thor would agree to let him try out almost anything on him, though he sometimes needed convincing.

It had started smoothly enough…

/

* * *

/

It had started smoothly enough. Loki had held his hand in front of Thor's face, tugging at just the right combination of particles until they formed a chain over the lips. The chaining was easy and took only a few seconds; he'd practiced it extensively beforehand without any lips involved.

Game for the experiment, Thor had tried to open his mouth, first tentatively, then with more and more effort until Loki told him to stop out of fear he'd succeed in ripping his face apart.

Thor had then pointed to his lips and briefly widened his eyes. _Undo it._

Loki nodded and held his hand up again. It should have been simple. It _had_ been simple, when he'd chained and unchained free-floating particles in the air. But now as he tugged and pushed and prodded, the particles did not even loosen, much less pull apart.

A minute later Thor pointed at Loki, then mimed gripping a neck and pounding a fist down on the head.

Two minutes later Thor's face turned red from growing rage and his hands clenched into fists.

Three minutes later, despite Loki urging him to stay still, that he would figure this out, Thor lunged at him, going for his middle and easily knocking him to the ground. When he recovered his breath he managed to scoot away just in time to avoid Thor's fist connecting with his jaw. He scrambled to his feet, still trying to assure Thor he could do this, everything would be all right, then dashed away as Thor lunged for him again. They were out at their own training grounds, taking a break from sword practice. As Thor chased Loki all over the grounds, Loki gave up trying to convince his older brother of anything and just hoped he didn't grab a sword. All of a sudden dirt rushed up to meet him; he'd tripped over a tree root. His face slammed into the unyielding earth, dazing him. Then he felt his head being yanked up by his hair and let out a yell, but the pummeling he expected to happen next didn't – instead he heard a thud beside his left ear, his face made unexpected solid contact with the dirt again, and then a weight fell against the back of his head, pressing his face painfully into the ground.

Loki sucked in a dusty breath, then coughed it out. He shoved Thor's shoulder off of his head, then pushed himself to his knees. Thor was face-down himself, and struggling – struggling! – to push himself up. Loki bent over his brother and rolled him over. His face was bright red, his eyes were wild with desperation, his chest was heaving. His hands flew to his mouth and his fingers began clawing at his lips.

Loki's eyes went wide with new fear. He grabbed for Thor's hands and tried to pull them away; Thor then started scratching at Loki's face with his fingernails. "Thor, stop it! You have to calm down. You're not getting enough air through your nose. Just calm down, you won't need as much air. I promise" – Loki jerked back as Thor almost managed to scratch his eyeball – "I promise I can fix this. But you have to calm down. Stay still. Breathe. I can fix it. I promise…"

Loki repeated himself over and over until Thor either grew too weak from lack of air or actually listened to him; in either case his arms fell limply to his sides and his breathing gradually calmed and slowed. Loki coaxed him to a tree stump, where he sat, stony-faced and trembling slightly, as Loki tried to figure out what went wrong.

"Oh!" Loki exclaimed after nearly an hour, startling Thor so much he almost fell off the stump. "It's fused with the skin!"

Loki took two quick steps back when Thor launched himself up, his eyes nearly popping out of his head. He put his hands out in front of him and stiffened his arms; Thor advanced, pushing him further backward but keeping his own arms locked at his side.

"No, no, it's not permanent!" Loki cried. "I can still fix it. Now that I know what's wrong, I mean what happened, it'll be easy."

Thor stopped, glared at him long and hard enough that Loki thought he must have shrunk a couple of inches or else Thor had grown a couple. Then he trudged back to the stump and sat down again.

Loki nodded confidently, but secretly worried he'd have to summon old Mordi, or worse yet go to his parents. He had never done anything like this, and wasn't exactly sure how to separate the chain from the lips without also separating part of the skin itself.

It took another hour for him to figure it out, and as soon as he had separated enough of the chain from the corner of Thor's lips for him to part them a little, his brother began trying to speak. Loki couldn't understand the words, but he knew Thor was detailing all the ways he was going to make Loki pay for this. Once he got the hang of it, it went more quickly, and in just a couple of minutes more the chain was gone and Thor's mouth burst open. He stretched his jaw and breathed in deeply while Loki watched and waited with a nervous forced smile. Suddenly Thor sprang up again and Loki only got a half-step back before Thor's fist at last connected with his jaw. He fell sprawled on his back, and wisely stayed down.

"You told me you practiced," Thor said angrily, towering over him and blocking the setting sun.

"I did! Just…not on a person. I didn't know it would work like that. I'm sorry it took so long. I'm sorry I scared you," Loki said meekly.

Thor's expression changed, his anger deflected as Loki had hoped. "I wasn't scared. Just mad. And bored out of my skin having to wait forever for you to figure out how you messed up your little trick. But don't worry, I entertained myself by thinking of all the different ways I could kill you once you figured it out."

"What did you decide on?" Loki asked, still not moving.

Thor paused, staring down hard at his little brother. He _had_ agreed to this, after all. He sighed. "I couldn't make up my mind. Too many good options. Come on, we're going to be late for dinner," he said, leaning down and holding out his hand.

Loki looked at the hand for a moment, then took it and let Thor pull him to his feet.

"You're bleeding," Thor said when he was on his feet.

Loki gingerly touched the side of his face where Thor had hit him; it was tender but his fingers came away dry.

"Give me a break, Loki, I didn't hit you _that_ hard. Look up."

Loki squinted his eyes at Thor, then did as told. Thor put one hand under his chin to keep his head back then brushed a thumb under his nose. Loki jerked away, afraid Thor had some kind of creatively painful retribution in mind.

Thor rolled his eyes. "It's dried. But you better go straight to your chambers and get that cleaned up. If Mother sees you like that I'll get the blame for your idiocy."

Loki wiped the back of his hand under his nose; it came away with dark dried blood and dirt. He must have bloodied his nose when he tripped over the tree root. He wiped around his nose and mouth as best he could. "Better?"

"It'll do for now," Thor said. "Come on."

They gathered their swords and other things and made their way to the street that led to the palace. They were dirty and disheveled, but that was no different from just about every day when they returned home.

They walked in silence until Loki couldn't take it anymore, unable to believe he'd gotten off that easily and certain something terrible was still to come. "I'm really sorry, Brother. I didn't expect that to happen. I thought I could undo the chain as easily as I made it, and I practiced for days. I never meant to do anything to hurt you."

"There's your mistake. You didn't anticipate. It's like what Hermodur always says – you have to anticipate your enemy's moves. If you're going to use magic against an enemy, you have to anticipate not just how the enemy acts, but how the magic acts. Right?"

"Right," Loki agreed with a thoughtful nod, impressed. Thor didn't often spout semi-philosophical insights, and he was indeed correct. Loki had failed to take into account the variable of the skin's interaction with the chain – an obvious mistake.

"So, next time, anticipate."

"Next time?" Loki asked hopefully.

Thor gave him a light shove. "Don't get any bright ideas. You aren't doing that to me ever again. If you do, I _will_ kill you. I just mean in general."

Loki nodded. "I understand. I promise."

They continued on in silence, Thor this time breaking it as they neared the private side entrance. "It's not a bad trick."

Loki tried but failed to suppress his grin while Thor pointedly ignored him. This, he knew, was as close as Thor would ever come to admitting just how scared he'd actually been. Thor, who tended to view Loki's "tricks" in terms of how entertaining they were or how useful they would be against an enemy. Thor hadn't found that experience entertaining. And because Thor did not scare easily and almost never admitted it when he was, _not a bad trick_ was in this case the highest of praise from him, something for Loki to file away and remember.

* * *

/

_I have no doubt that at some point I will regret trying to be cute and going with the "A & A" and "B & B" etc. titles, when I waste an hour of my life staring at the computer trying to come up with a title that fits that pattern. Ah well. It's working so far._

_On the off-chance I've confused anyone, the second half of this chapter is a flashback from not terribly long ago.  
_

_In the next chapter, Loki finally finds out why Thor was called to the throne room.  
_


	4. Division & Duty

**Magic & Mead**

**Chapter Four: Division & Duty**

By the time the banquet was beginning to break up, signaled by his parents' departure, Loki's eyes were drooping. He hadn't seen Ranka again all night, and hoped he never did for the rest of his life. He had also never had a chance to talk to Thor. Too young to engage in drunken revelries or serious political discussion and too old to play children's games, the brothers both typically drifted away from these events well before they ended. But tonight Thor had spent the evening hovering near Father or talking with the visiting Vanir on his own. Loki had spent the evening watching Thor, listening to the adults' conversations, or pressed to his mother's side.

When he realized Thor had disappeared, he strolled across the hall and into the corridor. As soon as he made it to the doorway that hid the private staircase, nodded to the guard posted there, and closed the door behind him, he raced up the stairs and down the corridor to his chambers as fast as he could manage. He was about to strip the armor and heavy garments from his tired body when he caught sight of himself in the mirror. He straightened his posture and gave himself a stern look. Then he dissolved into laughter, thinking how imposing he must have looked to Ranka. He, a young prince of Asgard, son of the great Odin All-Father, and in these garments accented with shining golden metal…for the first time he thought maybe his formal attire wasn't so bad after all.

Maybe it wasn't so bad, but it was still heavy. He worked off the layers and changed into the light gray-blue tunic and pants he slept in, then went back out into the corridor and padded down to Thor's chambers, next to his. As was both brothers' habit from a decade of sharing chambers, Loki entered Thor's rooms without knocking, and, not finding him in the ante chamber, proceeded to his bedroom. There he saw his older brother from the chest down lying on his back on the floor, the rest of him hidden underneath the foot of the bed.

"Are you trying to hide?" Loki asked, and suddenly the foot of the bed lowered. He realized then what Thor had been doing.

Thor pushed himself out from under the bed and stood up. He was still in his own formal attire and Mother would not have been happy to see him lying on the floor in it. "Have you ever known me to hide from _anything_, Brother?" Thor asked with a grin, flexing his growing arm muscles.

"Lady Inge Asmundsdottir."

Thor made a face. "She was always kissing me or putting her hands in my hair or talking to me like I was two. And she smelled funny. That doesn't count."

"You got pretty good at hiding from Birna."

"Don't start that again, Loki. Not unless you want me to start reminding you about how you ran away in terror the first time a girl's lips touched yours."

"I told you, I was asleep!" Loki protested. But Thor didn't seem to be listening. He had moved over to his wardrobe and was working his way out of his armor, dropping the pieces haphazardly onto a deep shelf. "Anyway, she's changed her story now. Ask her what happened; she'll tell you she made the whole thing up," he said smugly.

Thor looked up at him from tugging his boots off. "What did you do?"

"Nothing. She realized she shouldn't have been spreading lies."

Leaving his boots where he took them off, Thor hopped up onto his bed and sat with his back to the headboard and his legs stretched out in front of him. "_You're_ the liar, Loki. So what did you do to her?"

"Nothing," Loki repeated, standing at the foot of the bed. He pursed his lips. "I might have scared her a little."

"Loookiiiii…"

"I sealed her mouth and I told her I'd make it permanent if she didn't tell everyone she made it all up."

Thor frowned and shook his head. Not exactly what Loki expected.

"You won't tell Mother or Father, will you?" Loki asked, pleading with his tone of voice. That would go very badly for him.

This time Thor laughed, and Loki sighed in relief. "Of course not. She deserved it anyway. _I_ can wipe the floor with you and call you the mutant spawn of the tangled roots of Yggdrasil, but that girl has no right to go around making fun of you. And if a girl kissed me in my sleep I'd probably punch her in the nose before I woke up. She should have done it when you were awake."

Loki nodded thoughtfully. _That_ scenario probably would have led to an entirely different outcome.

"Wait a second," Thor said a moment later sitting up from his relaxed position. "You _did_ undo your little trick, didn't you?"

Loki smirked at him. "No, I left it that way for her to go running off to show her parents. Of course I undid it. It was easy. Like that," he said snapping his fingers.

Thor was a little skeptical, but he supposed he would have heard about it if there'd been a repeat of what happened when Loki tried that on him. He relaxed back against the headboard. "I'm tired," he muttered, forgetting all about his brother's girl problems. "What a boring feast."

"Then why did you stay so long?"

"Why did _you_ stay so long?"

"Because I wanted to talk to you." Loki got up on the bed and sat cross-legged with his back to the footboard.

"About what?"

"What did Father want to see you about?"

Thor let his eyes drift closed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He had a headache; he never got headaches, not unless he got hit over the head really, really hard. "He wants to teach me things. Show me things."

"Like what?" Loki asked, surprised and intrigued. Father had always taught them things and shown them things, but always together.

"I don't know. About what it's like to be a king. But not the fun parts. Only the boring parts. So far, anyway."

"But like what?" Loki repeated, his curiosity not tempered in the slightest by Thor's lack of enthusiasm.

Thor sighed and opened his eyes. It was bad enough to have given up his afternoon sparring time for this; now he had to relive it to appease Loki's unrelenting inquisitiveness. "He told me about some trade war between Asgard and Vanaheim. It sounds more exciting than it is; there's no fighting involved. Just arguing about the price and quantity and tax on a bolt of cloth. And then we met with Father's trade advisor and _he_ told me about it all over again only with a lot more detail. And then they talked about King Gullveig and _his_ trade advisor. And then I had to make polite small talk with the visiting Vanir all night long. And when Gullveig comes I have to stay by Father's side talking to people the entire time."

"What's so bad about that?" Loki asked. He would be bursting with pride if his father asked him to stay by his side during such an important event.

"Loki, think about it. There's going to be all kinds of fun – gaming and competitions and exhibitions, and everyone will be there, and I won't get to enjoy _any_ of it. It's going to be awful."

Loki looked down at his hands, toying with the thin metallic blue fabric of his tunic. Sometimes he just couldn't understand his older brother. But now he didn't understand his father, either. Yes, Thor would be king; Loki had known this and not questioned it all his life, the way he knew and did not question that his father was his father and his mother his mother – it simply was. But they had always done everything together. And when someday Thor was king, Loki would still be there – laughing, fighting, pulling pranks, both of them sharing things with each other they could never share with anyone else, because they were brothers. Loki couldn't imagine that ever changing. So why should they be separated now? Why should Father want to teach things only to Thor?

Loki said goodnight to his brother and left him to mope over the time he would be forced to spend with their father doing things that put him to sleep, while Loki moped in his own chambers over being left out of this time with their father doing things that intrigued him.

* * *

/

_Thor's reaction to what Loki did is meant to echo his reaction to Loki scaring the servant in the first deleted scene in the movie _Thor_: he laughed and had no problem with Loki turning the wine into snakes other than it being a "waste of good wine." I wouldn't call it cruelty on Thor's part, but more of an insufficient amount of empathy for other people. I'll spare you any further running commentary but I did want to mention that._

_Thanks for reading; reviews welcome and will be responded to.  
_


	5. Mischief & Milk, Gardens & Grandchildren

_This chapter is rather longer than previous chapters; that's because when originally written it had no chapter breaks. So there was no effort to kind of keep things in similarly-sized "chunks." Anyway, just wanted to let you know this one takes a bit longer to read than the previous ones._

/

* * *

**Magic & Mead**

**Chapter Five: Mischief & Milk, Gardens & Grandchildren**

The next day Thor again had to go straight to their father's study after classes; from the way he'd trudged off he still looked as though he were expecting to be punished, Loki thought. Loki watched him go, trying but failing to muster sympathy.

He wandered through the palace for a while, bored and in too dreary a mood to indulge in his penchant for mischief, before ending up at his parents' expansive chambers again. This time a guard directed him to the exhibition hall.

Loki smiled at the chaotic activity he found there. The hall fairly crackled with energy. Tables and chairs and display racks were being moved here and there amid shouted instructions while a large raised seating area was being constructed for the two royal families.

His mother was easy to spot; she was dressed in long flowing swirls of gold and pale pink, one of the few women in the hall and easily the most elegant and beautiful. She was at the far end of the hall and hadn't noticed him enter, and he was drawn to the commotion so he took his time getting to her. He knew he shouldn't, but he couldn't stop himself from laughing when he surreptitiously circled around one display stand in the making and startled the man constructing it, causing him to knock over the shelves he had just put together. The man stuttered an apology, clearly recognizing Loki with his distinctive black hair and trademark green, today mixed with yellow.

"Please don't apologize, sir, it was my fault," Loki said, getting his laughter under control. He really was getting too old for such silliness.

His flash of maturity had come at the right moment, for when he turned away from the man who had bowed and set about reassembling his shelves, his mother's eyes were upon him. He grinned at her and darted through the crowd toward her.

"Did you do that, Loki?" she asked when he reached her side.

"Yes, Mother. But not on purpose. And I apologized." It was mostly the truth, Loki thought. Close enough.

"I saw that. Thank you for apologizing. But you shouldn't be getting in the way. People are working hard to get ready for the festivities on short notice."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"Well, since you're here," she said, putting an arm around his shoulder and gently turning him toward the racks of baked goods they stood beside, "you can help me make a decision."

Loki's eyebrows shot up and he nodded enthusiastically.

"One of these pastries is to be served for dessert when King Gullveig and his retinue feast with us. I was just about to start tasting these to make a selection."

Loki looked at the assortment before him – different shapes and sizes and colors and fruits and glazes and creams and drizzles and nuts. Any other day and he might have exploded with sheer delight, but today he had eaten all of his lunch instead of giving half of it to Thor, who hadn't been pleased, somehow failing to recognize that he did not actually have any intrinsic right to his brother's meal. Fifteen different pastries lined the narrow shelves before him.

He reached tentatively for one on the lowest shelf and took the smallest bite he could while still sampling all of its elements – a fruit mixture in a crimped pastry shell, with an artistic swirl of chocolate on top followed by a sprinkling of nuts. Loki flattened his mouth into something that wasn't quite a smile and wasn't quite a frown. It was good, but he wasn't impressed. He wasn't hungry in the slightest, so it would take a lot to impress him.

Frigga urged him on and one by one he tried them all, making a face at one for its unexpected tanginess. Frigga frowned at him for that one and he recovered his decorum, realizing he had just insulted whomever made that particular treat. But Loki didn't care that much; he wasn't in the mood to pretend he liked something when he didn't.

"Well?" Frigga asked.

Loki thought; roamed his eyes over the pastries, and finally shrugged, remembering only when it was too late that his mother was trying to get him to stop shrugging so much.

"Don't shrug, answer," she chided.

"I don't know. There are so many. And they're all very good." _Except _that_ one._

"Yes, but somehow we must choose."

_Somehow _I_ must choose, apparently._ Loki looked again at each of the sweets in turn, and a couple of minutes later nominated three as his favorites. Frigga insisted they both try all three, and part of him wished he'd just randomly chosen one of them. But if his mother wanted his input and was treating this seriously, he could not do other than take it seriously himself.

"You don't think this one is a little too sweet?" Frigga asked about one of them. "I'm not sure the mead will stand up to it."

Loki nodded. He wasn't old enough to drink mead yet, but he had tasted it once from her cup and knew it to be sweet. Paired with an overly sweet dish, its true flavor would be lost on the taste buds.

His eyes fell to the remaining two choices. Both were delicious. He could not choose between them based on taste, so he studied their appearance. Both were artistic…but…

"Of these two, I think this one is the most appropriate," he said.

"Appropriate?" his mother echoed. "How so?"

He picked up the one he had pointed to – a moist round cake-like pastry topped with light fluffy cream and a glazed and lightly spiced pinwheel of thin alternating slices of apple and pear, with blueberries ringing the edge. "Two distinct fruits that look similar when sliced like this, and that make a circle together. Asgard and Vanaheim, the Aesir and the Vanir."

Frigga raised her eyebrows; Loki could tell she was looking at the pastry in his hand in a new light. "And the blueberries?" she asked.

"Well…"

"Go on," she encouraged him.

"They could be arranged differently. Clustering at the bottom and branching up and out through the circle. Like Yggdrasil. Connecting the Aesir and the Vanir and all the Nine Realms," Loki said, glancing up from the pastry to his mother. He was less confident in this suggestion, and upon voicing it he was certain it sounded silly, reminiscent of a poorly drawn sketch he or Thor might have made a few years ago when they'd studied the World Tree.

But Frigga was giving it serious consideration. "Prepare several versions of this one, taking into account my son's suggestion. We'll try them tomorrow morning at breakfast."

One of the bakers nodded and bowed before exclaiming an enthusiastic, "Yes, Your Majesty!" Loki kept himself in check but felt just as proud.

"Why don't we take one of these and go out to the garden for a little picnic?"

Loki's eyes widened. He didn't want to offend the bakers who were packing up their goods now, but he thought he might be sick if he tried to eat another pastry.

"Or we could just send for a glass of milk," she said with a teasing smile.

"That sounds good, Mother," Loki quickly responded.

Frigga ordered the milk and the two set off arm in arm.

Asgard was dotted with many gardens, especially around the palace. Most of them were public and the rest semi-private, except for one relatively small one immediately behind the palace, walled with enchantments that permitted those in the garden to see out but not those outside it to see in. Among his family, _the garden_ referred only to this private location; Loki and Thor were not even allowed to bring friends here.

When they reached it, Loki pulled away from his mother and ran down to the pond. He watched the two geese swimming in its waters and the family of two grown turtles and three babies sunning themselves on a small half-submerged limb downed from a nearby birch tree until the garden caretaker arrived, bringing a pitcher and two glasses which she filled with fresh milk. Frigga already sat on the wooden bench on one side of the table, from which she had watched him at the pond; Loki darted back up the slight incline and swung his legs over the bench opposite her.

He grabbed his glass and took a big gulp.

"Slow down, Loki."

"Sorry," he said, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.

Frigga shook her head and laughed.

"Sorry again," he said, laughing with her as he realized what he'd done. He was distracted and his manners were suffering for it.

"That's all right. If there's anywhere you can leave behind all formality and just be yourself other than in your own private chambers it's here. Even if _yourself_ is entirely uncultured and uncivilized."

"I'll tell Thor. He'll be happy to know he can get it out of his system here and stop acting like that everywhere else."

"Oh, you two are so horrible to each other," Frigga said, but Loki knew she was just teasing. He flashed her a big toothy grin.

She shook her head at him again. "By the way, what were you up to at dinner last night? You ate almost as much as Thor."

Loki's expression instantly changed to dismay. "_Almost_?" He thought he'd matched his brother.

"Mm-hm," Frigga breathed, still waiting for an answer.

Loki leaned forward, put his elbows on the table, and rested his chin in his hands, the milk forgotten. "I don't know. I thought maybe I could put on some weight."

"Oh, Loki, are you worried about that again?"

"I'm not _worried_, I just wish I weren't quite so thin," he said, relieved to be able to tell his mother about it. There was no one else in the entire realm he could tell without being laughed at, and he was unwilling to endure Thor's laughter over this.

"I wish I knew how to convince you that Thor is Thor and you are you. There's no need for you to try to be the same as him. I wouldn't change a thing about you."

Loki frowned. "You're my mother. You _have_ to say that."

"No, I don't. In fact, I retract the statement."

He lifted his head and looked at her inquisitively; she looked serious.

"I would have you stop comparing yourself to your brother, even though I know it's a natural thing for you to do. And I would have you cut your hair more often. Thor, too."

Loki squinted his eyes and reached around to tug at the ends of his hair. It wasn't really that long, just past his collar-line when he wore a high-collared shirt. She didn't think they were old enough to grow it out, and he and Thor were constantly pressing the limit on how long they could get it before she insisted they cut it. Thor's hair grew faster – naturally – so he always managed to get his longer before they were both informed they had a non-negotiable appointment with the barber.

"It's not just about Thor," Loki said a moment later. "I want to be a stronger fighter. I need more muscle."

"Strength takes many forms," she said enigmatically. Loki didn't like it when she talked like that – he knew it might sound wise and even profound to him in twenty or two hundred years, but in the moment it just sounded like she was avoiding the issue. Strength might take many forms, but he was only concerned about one of those forms right now.

"Besides," she added after taking a sip of milk, "stuffing yourself at the dinner table won't make you gain muscle. Thor takes after your father – he burns off a lot of energy and he gets very hungry. Everything he eats is burned off or turns to muscle. When your father and I were first married I was positively embarrassed to sit beside him in the feasting hall."

"Who do I take after, then?" Loki asked, barely registering what she'd said at the end, and hoped against hope he would hear an acceptable answer, like his grandfather Borr or perhaps one of his uncles.

But his mother looked startled, and from the expression on her face he knew it was going to be the _other_ answer.

"Well, me, I suppose," she said brightly.

Loki let his forehead fall into his hands. Just what he and almost _every_ fourteen-year-old Asgardian boy wanted to hear, Loki thought.

Frigga grasped his hands and pulled them away from his head; he looked up at her reluctantly. "Is it so terrible to be told you take after me? After the queen of Asgard?"

_Maybe not if you're a girl_, he thought. _If you're a boy better to take after the _king_ of Asgard like your brother._ But he wouldn't say that to her. It might hurt her feelings. He changed the subject to one he'd been meaning to ask about all along.

"Why does Father want to see Thor about King Gullveig's visit?"

"He wants him to understand the conflict between the clothmakers'-"

"No, I mean, why does he want to see _only_ Thor, and not me?"

"Thor is going to be king someday. In just five years he'll reach his age of responsibility. He'll need to learn how to handle the smaller disputes first if he's going to be able to maintain the hard-won peace throughout the realms. It's a good, practical lesson for him to observe how your father does it."

"But he's always taught us everything together. Why is it different now? Did I do something wrong?" Loki asked, trying to keep the hurt and fear from his voice. He knew Thor was closer to their father, just as he was closer to their mother. But as much as he loved his mother, he longed for the same kind of approval from his father that Thor always seemed to get, the same easy forgiveness of mistakes, the same appreciation for his talents even if they were different from Thor's. But the one time he asked his mother about _that_, she'd gotten upset and tried to assure him those perceived differences were imagined, that Odin loved his sons the same, just as she did, even though it might seem to Thor that she was more approving of Loki. Loki was fairly certain Thor didn't think that, however. In fact, he sometimes teased Loki over how close he was to their mother.

Frigga, meanwhile, leaned forward and kissed Loki's forehead, still holding onto his hands. He pulled them away and put them in his lap. "Of course not, Loki. Don't ever think such things. It's not that your father doesn't want you with him. But Thor will one day have responsibilities that you will not. This has nothing to do with who you are or how much we love you, you know that, don't you? It has only to do with the order of your birth." She paused a moment. "Loki, answer me something. And tell me the truth. Are you envious of your brother?"

"No," Loki answered without hesitation.

"Loki…why don't I entirely believe you? I asked you to tell me the truth."

He sat up straighter. "I don't know. I'm telling the truth."

"Good," his mother said with a nod. "Because being king is nothing to envy. With responsibilities like that come severe restrictions on your freedom. Don't think I don't know how much Thor would rather be outside playing with you than inside being lectured about trade agreements."

"Playing?" Loki repeated with a grimace.

"Call it what you like. You know it's true. The day will come when Thor's life will be ruled by his responsibilities even as he rules. It's a burden he will bear that you will not, Loki. It is truly nothing you should envy."

"I don't. I understand all that," he said. It wasn't _entirely_ true – responsibilities ruling your life seemed a bit overly dramatic, and after all, how hard could it be to get feuding clothmakers to stop arguing anyway? At least the first part was true. "I don't care about being king. But…shouldn't I learn the same things Thor does? What if he needs my help with something? We've always helped each other. He's better at a lot of things, but I'm better at some things, too. I know he's going to be king. But I'm not going to just disappear, am I?"

And that was it. Even as his mother began to respond, he realized that _this_ was the fear that had curled in his belly ever since he'd learned Thor was being pulled away from him for something other than punishment. That he didn't matter. That he would be forgotten.

"Of course not. You'll always be my son. And you'll always be Thor's brother. And you and he must always remain friends. Brotherhood is yours for free. Friendship sometimes requires work. But you've made a good point. And a king needs advisors around him who make good points and ask good questions on a regular basis. Therefore, I think you should also observe your father handling this quarrel. I'll ask him about it. It would mean you'll have less free time. After your lessons you'd have to go directly to your father. No playing. Fighting, exploring, adventuring, whatever you care to call it," she added, cutting off his objection.

Satisfied with the amendment, Loki nodded heavily. He saw right through her. He wasn't a _child_ anymore, after all. He knew that _she_ knew that this was exactly what he wanted. But he could go along with the game. "I suppose I could give up my free time," he said with a dramatic sigh.

"As long as we're clear on that," Frigga said with a laugh. "I'll ask him tonight. Now. How did you do on your poem today?"

Loki groaned and made a face, but still sat up straighter than before. "I asked Ulfid if I could have another day because of the feast. I fell asleep while I was working on it last night."

"That's because you ate too much. So did he permit another day?"

He nodded. "I'll work on it after dinner tonight."

"Work on it _before_ dinner, Loki. Don't wait until the last minute, especially for things that you find unpleasant. Those are the first things you should do. And there's another feast tonight – we'll have one for every night the Vanir delegation is here. It'll be another late evening. You know, you should ask Thor for help with this. He's been doing well with poetry lately."

"I don't know how _that_ happened," Loki said, rolling his eyes. But it was true. The previous year, while Loki hadn't found it easy he'd still outdone Thor, who seemed to have a knack only for simple rhymes and short words. Now Loki still struggled, more so because the material was harder, but Thor showed up to class with nicely metered or rhymed complex creations that required little or no revision.

"Perhaps he's a late bloomer to poetry."

Loki shrugged, and couldn't help glancing at his long thin arm. Maybe it would be a late bloomer as well and in another couple of years look just like Thor's.

"Ask him, Loki. Don't let pride stop you from asking for help when you need it."

Loki watched as his mother finished her milk. He grabbed his own and gulped down the rest of it, full though he was, earning him a frown. "Mother…"

"Yes?"

Oh, he hadn't wanted to ask _her_ about this! What would she know about it? But he couldn't stop himself. "When I went to Thor's chambers after the feast last night, he was on the floor under his bed, lifting it up. And he was still in his formal attire." He couldn't resist adding the last in; it removed a tiny bit of the sting of confiding in his mother about this.

She hesitated. "All right," she finally said. Loki couldn't tell what she was thinking.

"Well…I was wondering…maybe I should be doing things like that, too."

"Lifting beds? I wish you wouldn't. I wish Thor wouldn't, either. I would worry about you."

"I don't mean that, specifically. Besides, I already tried. I couldn't do it," he said, dejectedly.

"Oh, Loki, honestly, what am I going to do with you? Come here," she said, beckoning him to her side.

Reluctantly he moved over to sit next to her, but as soon as she pulled him against her side he relaxed and leaned into her softness and warmth. His father may be the king and war hero, but there was nowhere in the Nine Realms he felt safer than in his mother's arms. Not long ago, after a particularly relentless round of teasing from Thor, he'd gone through a stage of denying himself this comfort, but she'd been hurt and he'd been miserable and before long he was crying in her arms for her forgiveness, which she gave easily as she always unfailingly did.

"Thor is older. He's built differently. Stop comparing yourself to him like that!" She squeezed his arm at the end, not hard enough to hurt but hard enough for him to know she meant it.

"But it's not about Thor!" he repeated. "It's…it's about me. What _I_ want to be. What I _should_ be," he said, pulling away from his mother to look her in the eye and to prevent her from coddling the conviction right out of him. From making him feel like he didn't have a right to feel what he felt.

"You are Loki Odinson. You are _exactly_ what you should be," she said, trying to pull him back to her side, but he resisted.

"An Odinson has to be prepared to defend his realm. Father said so."

Frigga gave up and leaned into the table, clasping her hands on top of it. "Not today. And not tomorrow either. You have six years before you become of age, Loki, why… Oh, I suppose it's the same for everyone, wanting to grow up so quickly. Part of me wishes I could keep you like this forever. So you never change."

She was facing him now with such a sad, serious look he would've done anything to make it go away. "I won't ever change," he promised her, and he meant it. Except for getting bigger.

"Yes, you will, my little one. You'll grow into a man and things won't be quite as they are now. But that's as it should be. You see, the other part of me can't wait to see you grow into a man, to see the things you'll accomplish, the talents you develop and put to use, the woman you'll fall in love with and marry, the grandchildren you'll-"

"Mother!"

Frigga broke into laughter. "I'm teasing. Not today, and not tomorrow. Everything in its time, Loki. Grandchildren in particular will be many many years from now. Centuries. Millenia. I'm still a young woman myself. It had _better_ be millennia from now."

Loki fidgeted on the bench and let his gaze follow a squirrel scampering up a tree. He hated it when she started talking about him or Thor getting married, and now babies! He couldn't imagine it. What if he'd been older and thought himself in love with Ranka and married her? He literally shuddered at the thought.

"So…instead of lifting beds…"

Loki's attention snapped back to his mother.

"Ask one of your trainers what you can do to build your strength. Ask Tyr. He'll be your trainer before long."

His shoulders slumped. "I would be so embarrassed," he muttered, embarrassed to admit it was embarrassing.

"Loki, what did I just tell you about pride?" she asked him sternly.

He looked upward, then slid his eyes over to her. "Don't let it get in the way of asking for help if I need it. All right, all right. I'll ask."

"Good. Now _I_ want to ask for _your_ help."

"With what?"

"Judging pastries. Join me for breakfast tomorrow, won't you? I was very proud of you today. I thought your ideas were wonderful."

"Really? All right, I'd love to," Loki said, his smile approaching Thor proportions.

* * *

/

_Hope you enjoyed! I'd love to hear from you - anything you particularly liked or didn't like, any thoughts on the characters on your mind, whatever reactions you may have had._

_Up next...it ain't called "Magic & Mead" for nothin'. Though there's way more mead than magic.  
_


	6. Tankards & Trust

_Midgardians vs. Asgardians, folks, don't do it. ;-)**  
**_

_/  
_

* * *

**Magic & Mead**

**Chapter Six: Tankards & Trust**

The feast that night was a smaller and quieter affair than the previous night's, but Thor was still dutifully entertaining the Vanir guests as best he could. His patience was wearing thin, though, just two days in. Once, while stuck with a particularly snooze-worthy old man with whom fifteen-year-old Thor had nothing in the Nine Realms in common – he was a huge farm-owner of all things – he found a moment when no one else was looking in the right direction and he caught Loki's attention and rolled his eyes around until they crossed.

Meanwhile, Loki decided that even though he hadn't been _instructed_ to spend his evening with the Vanir guests his father would be glad to see him do so. He approached a man and a woman who ignored him until he drifted off, and then he spotted his mother's friend Halla and joined her. That didn't work out so well, either, though – she ruffled his hair and soon called his mother over. He'd spent much of the previous night by her side and felt self-conscious about doing so again.

"Did you ask Thor for help with your project yet?" Frigga asked before he could devise an escape.

He almost lied, but realized in time that he would be too easily caught in that lie. "No, Mother, I couldn't find him in time." _That_ lie would be harder to detect.

"Well, go ask him now."

"But he's talking with Father and one of the guests."

"That's all right, just say 'excuse me.' Look at him. He's bored to tears. You'll be doing him a favor."

"But-"

"Loki, you've done your duty here, now you have a duty to your studies. And Thor's done enough as well. Go help him and let him help you." She squeezed the shoulder her arm was wrapped around, then gave him a nudge.

He gave a reluctant but polite nod to Lady Halla and crossed the hall. "Excuse me, Thor, may I speak with you?" he asked after a quick bow to his father. Thor excused himself with surprisingly good manners and followed Loki over to a quiet spot at the side of the room.

"Thanks, Loki, you're the best," Thor said as soon as they were out of earshot. "They started talking about one of the treaties between Asgard and Vanaheim and I thought I was going to fall asleep standing up. That or start hitting random things. Or people."

"It was Mother's idea. She wants me to ask you to help me with my poem," Loki said, trying and not entirely succeeding in keeping the distaste from his tone. He couldn't remember the last time he'd asked Thor for help with his assignments. Maybe never. Sometimes they did the work together to get through it more quickly, but Loki usually enjoyed the classroom lessons and rarely had difficulty with them.

"You still haven't done that?" Thor was asking.

"No. And since when did _you_ get so good at it?" Loki sneered, giving up entirely on holding back what he _really_ thought about this idea.

"Since I discovered a secret," Thor answered, watching a young serving girl pass by as an idea formed.

"What secret?" Loki asked, unsure if Thor were being serious or not. Probably not, he thought, but there had to be _some _reason Thor had suddenly turned into such a talented poet.

"You go up to your chambers. I'll meet you there in a few mintues and I'll show you," Thor said, a conspiratorial grin on his face.

"All right," Loki said after a brief moment's hesitation. "Wait," he continued, grabbing Thor's forearm. "Can I change?"

Thor thought for a moment and looked Loki up and down. "No."

Loki grumbled at that but headed to his chambers. He left the door open and sat down at the small desk on the right side of the antechamber, where he'd left the booklet that held his poem about the Great Falls. By now he hated it. He wanted to rip it out and start over. Or just rip it out, the end. The words had to rhyme, had to have a particular syllable structure…completely ridiculous. If you wanted to express something you should be able to use whatever words you wanted without regard for their syllables and their stresses and their consonants and their vowels. Why should he have to come up with a reason to talk about _walls_ just because the word rhymed with _falls_? Stupid.

_I look beyond the walls / of tumbling water_, Loki read silently. His teacher had pointed out that he would have to be standing in the void of space to get a good look at those "walls of water." Loki hadn't thought of that, but he still tried to argue that you could see it well enough from the end of the bifrost. Ulfid hadn't been satisfied with "well enough."

_I look beyond the walls._

_ I throw some glowing balls._

Eager for a distraction, Loki formed an illusion of a red ball over the palm of his right hand. It shimmered and flickered; he could still see through it to his palm. But it was perfectly round, and the color was exactly as he meant it to be. He focused on it hard and it began to move away from him, still flickering but never fully winking out of existence. It floated further and further from him, then he sped everything up and sent it hurtling into the wall next to the door where it morphed into a few red tendrils of light and disappeared. He squinted at the wall, then got up and walked over to it. There was a small black scorch mark on the dark wood – clearly not a knot. It hadn't been there before. Loki's eyebrows went up as he touched the spot lightly with his fingertip. It was warm. _That's never happened before_, he thought with surprise and a tiny bit of concern. His father had warned him to stop playing around with magic, said he was too young and it was too dangerous.

There was no more time to ponder what had happened, though, for Thor at that moment shoved the door more widely open; it swung around and smashed into Loki's shoulder.

"Sorry," Thor said, when Loki yelped in surprise. "What are you doing behind the door? Come on, Brother, help me carry something." Thor went back out into the corridor.

Loki followed, looking forward to a chance to smash an incredibly heavy wooden door into Thor. Thor bent down and picked up two enormous wooden barrels, leaning back slightly and gripping his arms around the narrower bottoms, letting their weight press back against his chest.

"You get the other one," Thor said, and shuffled into Loki's chambers.

Loki bent to pick up the third barrel, but felt his arms and back strain against it. He waddled in bent at the waist, unable to lift it far from the ground. "How can you lift so much?" Loki gasped, pushing the barrel in line next to the other two. Thor was already going back into the corridor; he returned a moment later with a wooden tray holding six silver tankards, embossed with a saying commending the courage of the Aesir around the top, and the traditional royal symbol of the hammer on one side, inside a simple oval.

"I don't know," he said, setting the mugs on Loki's desk. "How can you make things disappear?"

Loki didn't answer; Thor wasn't expecting him to. Neither question was new, and Thor had been asking his for a lot longer. But that didn't mean Loki was satisfied with the answers.

"So what _is_ all this?" Loki asked.

Thor grinned. _This_ question he'd been waiting for. "The secret, Brother."

"The secret to what? Wait, to how to compose poetry?" Loki had been distracted by the red ball he'd made and had already forgotten why Thor was there. He hadn't questioned why he was dragging barrels into the room; Thor had told him to, so he did.

"That's right." Thor then bent over and lifted a barrel onto the desk, then pressed the button that made the tap emerge. He took two tankards and filled them both.

Loki knew from the amber color of the liquid and the slightly musty scent exactly what it was. "The secret is _mead_?" Loki demanded, incredulous.

"Of course. Have you _ever_ heard someone stand up at a feast and recite a poem or even part of a saga without a tankard of mead in his hand?"

Loki frowned as he thought. It was true. "But…but we'll get in trouble. We aren't supposed to drink it."

"No one will know. I got the kitchen to send all this up, and I told them it was for our guests. I went to a lot of trouble, Loki. You _said_ you wanted to know the secret."

"Wait, so…you…every time you have to compose a poem, you drink mead first?"

"Lots of it," Thor said with a nod and a grin.

"I don't believe you," Loki said immediately. Thor grinned like that when he lied – unless he was trying to avoid punishment, in which case the lies were laughably transparent. But the grin wasn't so transparent – he also grinned like that when he told the truth. And when he fell asleep in class. And when he ate. And when-

"Let us drink to poetry, Brother!" Thor exclaimed, taking one of the tankards and holding it out to Loki.

"You're telling me this is how you suddenly got so much better at poetry," Loki said, watching Thor carefully.

"I'm telling you I found the secret. But I guess you're too young to-"

"All right, fine. I'll try it. It doesn't hurt to give it a try." He took the tankard and tapped it against Thor's. It tickled his nose when he brought it to his lips. He glanced once more at Thor, then gulped down as much as he could with a couple of quick swallows. It was sweet, just as he remembered, tasting of honey and some kind of spice, and then came the burn. Loki groaned. It _really_ burned. He'd never had more than a few sips before.

"Keep going. Have you ever seen anyone start a saga with the first drink?"

"Thor, I'll-" Loki broke into a cough. "I'll get drunk. I won't be able to do this if I get drunk."

"Yes, you will. You'll see. Is this your poem?" Thor pointed to Loki's composition booklet.

Loki nodded. "Are you going to help me with it?"

"I _am_ helping you with it. Now go on."

Loki drank until he drained the mug. The burn wasn't as bad this time, but already he was feeling strange in some way he couldn't put his finger on.

/

* * *

_There wasn't originally a break here, but the chapter ran long without it, and this was a convenient place for a break - next chapter ("Poetry & Prattle") thus picks up precisely where this one leaves off._

_Thor, Thor, Thor... ::waggles finger at him::_


	7. Poetry & Prattle

_Picking up where "Tankards & Trust" left off...bad decisions continue._

/

* * *

**Magic & Mead**

**Chapter Seven: Poetry & Prattle**

Thor set his own mug down, then took Loki's, filled it, and gave it back to him.

"You haven't drunk any of yours," Loki accused, noticing Thor's glass had gone down on the desk still full.

"I'm not the one with the poem to write. I'll just drink a little to keep you company."

"I feel hot."

"Come on, Loki, you have to get a second glass down before you can start on the poem." Thor picked up his own tankard and took a sip.

"All right, all right." Loki took a deep breath and started drinking. Thor was laughing by the time he got it all down. Loki's legs felt a little unsteady and he reached over to his chair and placed his hand over its back.

"How does the poem begin?" Thor asked, taking Loki's glass and filling it again.

Loki recited the first two sentences from memory and accepted the tankard.

"I remember now," Thor said. "Start on this one."

Loki wrinkled his nose but took a swallow. "Oh, Thor, look what I did," Loki said, walking past his brother shakily to the wall by the closed door.

"What?" Thor asked, following him.

"This," Loki said with a grin.

"What?"

"This!"

"The wall? You didn't make the wall, Loki."

"Not the wall! This mark. Don't you see it?"

Thor leaned in close. There was a small dark smudge, but he couldn't imagine why Loki was so excited about it.

"I was thinking about changing that line, because Ulfid said it sounded contro-, conv-, contrived, so I was thinking about walls instead of balls, I mean walls instead of-"

"Balls instead of walls," Thor supplied, laughing again. Loki was already not making much sense, and Loki _always_ made sense.

"Right. And I made a ball like this…" Loki tried to form a red ball over his palm, his left one this time since his right held his half-drained tankard, but a translucent roundish thing was as close as he could get. He gave up and let the particles drift away. "Well, I made a ball like…like the other one. And I _threw_ it at the wall and it did that!" He pointed to the black spot again and took another gulp.

"Maybe you can get better at that and throw those balls at the enemy," Thor suggested.

But Loki's eyes went wide. "No, no, no. Father wouldn't like that. Don't tell him about it."

"I won't." Father wouldn't like _this_ either, but Thor knew better than to say that out loud.

"I have to get this off," Loki suddenly said, pulling at the heavy band of gold around his neck.

"All right. But finish your drink first."

Loki nodded, then drained his third tankard and set it down. As Thor refilled it he pulled the metal over his head and tossed it toward the sofa; it landed with a thud on the floor short of its goal.

"Do you really like wearing all this?" Loki asked. He knew the answer – or at least what Thor had told him before – but he felt so hot and weighted down now that he just couldn't believe Thor was comfortable.

But Thor nodded. "People look at us differently when we dress like this."

"They look at _you_ differently," Loki said. No one noticed him, it seemed, when he stood next to his older brother. But that was fine; he didn't think he needed or wanted that much attention anyway. He accepted a refilled tankard. "I'm supposed to be working on my poem," he remembered.

"Right. And you can't see beyond the walls of water. So…what if you were out in space somewhere?"

Loki rolled his eyes and took a drink. It didn't burn anymore, just gave him a comfortable warming on the inside. He just wished he wasn't so warm on the _outside_. "How would I be alive if I were floating somewhere in space? Besides, I'd have to rework the whole poem then. I'm not supposed to do some…" He couldn't figure out how to finish the thought, then he forgot what the thought was, and Thor didn't seem to be listening anyway, so he let it hang.

"I can't wait to get the helmet," Thor was saying, inspecting his image in Loki's mirror.

"I don't _ever_ want a helmet."

"Don't be such a child. Have you _seen_ Father in his helmet? He looks so fierce! I bet when the Frost Giants saw him in that helmet they ran screaming for their lives before he even lifted Gungnir."

"But he's- And you're like him. And Mother says I take after her." Loki felt a vague sense of embarrassment and thought perhaps he shouldn't have said that, but he took a few big swallows of mead and it passed.

Thor was busy trying to picture himself in his father's helmet, even closing one eye – he'd tried it on once just for a second, terrified he'd be caught – and he didn't immediately process Loki's words. When he did, he turned around and started laughing. "She said you take after her?"

"It's not funny," Loki said. But oddly enough, it kind of was, and he started to laugh, too.

"You don't look anything like her, anyway," Thor said. His laughter died and he squinted his eyes at Loki, examining him with really close attention for probably the first time. He didn't really look like _any_ of them. Then he nodded. "You know who you take after, probably? Uncle Villi. Before his hair went all white."

"That's what _I_ thought!" Loki exclaimed loudly. Except he was pretty sure he'd heard Uncle Villi's hair was red before it went white. Still, Villi had the most slender build of his father and two uncles. Loki drained his glass, happy with this new idea, and Thor refilled it and gave it back; Loki immediately took a long drink.

"So, are you in love with Ranka?" Thor asked out of the blue.

"No, yuck," Loki said, shaking his head back and forth, then pitching forward and grabbing onto his desk for support.

"'Yuck'?" Thor repeated with a laugh.

"She's awful. Terrible."

"But you loved her before?"

Loki tried to shrug, but managed only a tiny movement of one shoulder. "I liked her, I guess. She's pretty. And her hair is really soft. I liked it when her hair touched my face."

Thor's eyebrows shot up. He hadn't heard _this_ before. He immediately started trying to come up with more questions to put to his brother, but couldn't think of any because Loki already told him everything, or at least he thought he did. But then Loki helped him out again, and he obviously _didn't_ tell him quite everything.

"I wanted to kiss her. If she just would've done it when I wasn't sleeping, then I wouldn't have been scared."

"You'll meet somebody better. We both will. Maybe at the festival for King Gullveig. Thousands of people will be there, from all over."

Loki nodded, but he hadn't quite followed what Thor said. He was picturing Ranka and her lips, especially after he'd sealed them shut so she couldn't tell any more lies. "She's a liar," he declared.

Thor looked up at him out of his own thoughts, confused. "Finish your drink, Loki. I'll get you another one."

Loki's glass was almost empty anyway; he drained it and handed it over. Once Thor filled it and topped off his own, the first barrel was empty. He opened the tap on the second.

"Hey," Loki said.

"Hey," Thor said back with a laugh.

"You're supposed to be helping me with my poem. Mother said so."

"I told you. I _am_ helping. Why did you want to compose a poem about a waterfall anyway? You should make it about a battle. It's more exciting, and you can use whatever words you want." Almost all of Thor's poems were about battles. He wasn't opposed to poems about adventures and danger, either.

"Because it's beautiful. And so…so…big." It wasn't the word he was looking for, but it was close enough.

"Yeah, it's pretty, I guess. But it's just _water_. It doesn't _do_ anything."

"But I've never been in a battle. How am I supposed to describe something I haven't done?" He took a swallow, barely noticing any burn at all anymore as the sweet liquid further warmed him.

"We fight our own mock battles almost every day. Just pretend you're fighting a Frost Giant or something."

Loki's eyes went comically wide. "Do you pretend I'm a Frost Giant when we fight?"

"No way, are you crazy? I don't want to hurt you."

"You just try," Loki challenged, jutting out his chin.

"You want to? Right now?" Thor asked, grinning and balling his hands into fists. He was only teasing. Loki could barely stand up. Actually, Thor was surprised he _was_ still standing up. He had seen adults consume little more than what Loki had fall over face-first onto the table. He'd ordered three barrels and six glasses as a ruse to pass off the request as being for guests, not because he thought Loki might actually make it to a third barrel.

Loki was thinking hard about Thor's offer – or rather trying hard to remember just what it was he'd offered – but then he suddenly decided it was a good time to sit down.

"Look, it's my poem," he said, holding up his booklet to Thor after he half-fell into his chair.

Thor nodded and held his glass up toward Loki, who picked up his own and tapped it against Thor's, a little harder than he'd meant to, sloshing a few drops out. Thor took a small sip; Loki downed the glass.

While Thor refilled the glass yet again, Loki stared down at his poem. "Tall. The Grand Falls are very tall." He took a pen and wrote in his change, then read back what he had now. Oh. That didn't quite work. He made a small correction. "There! See, it's working!" he declared in slightly slurred words, holding the page up unsteadily in front of Thor.

Thor read what his brother had written. "I see. Mm-hmmm," he said in mock seriousness. "It's working all right."

Loki started scratching other words and phrases into his booklet, taking the occasional drink until Thor refilled it for him.

Thor was growing bored. He really thought Loki would've refused to drink more or passed out by now, but instead he was actually working on his homework. Where was all that liquid going? Loki chose that moment to push himself up shakily from his desk and hurry through the door into his bedchambers where the bathroom was, through another door. Thor picked up the booklet and paged through it – scribblings and scratchings about boring things from their classes. Nothing interesting. He tossed the booklet back on the desk. He glanced around the room; it looked the same as always.

Loki was taking so long Thor was starting to wonder if he should go check on him when his little brother emerged. His garments were a bit disheveled and his left bracer was missing, but at least he was fully clothed.

"Loki, I'm tired. I'm going back to my chambers."

"Oh…all right. I think I…I'll stay up a little while longer. The mead is really working now, and I have to finish this poem for tomorrow."

"Fine, Brother, I'll leave you to it, then. Good luck!"

Loki waved, then brought the tankard to his lips, closing his eyes as he drank. Thor slipped out the door with his own drink in hand. Part of him wanted to stay, but he figured at this rate Loki would be finishing off the third barrel around time for them leave for their lessons. Which should make tomorrow a _much_ more interesting day than he'd originally expected it to be.

* * *

/

_Binge drinking = Bad. Leaving your friend alone who's been binge drinking = Very Very Bad. Doing any of this at 14 = Super Bad. Bad as in "very dangerous and unhealthy." Preaching concluded for now._

_Reviews welcome!_


	8. Breathing & Blue

**Magic & Mead**

**Chapter Eight: Breathing & Blue**

Thor waited for only a few seconds by the stairs before deciding Loki might have overslept or something. He hated waiting. He ran back down the corridor and threw open Loki's door. There was no sight of him, but the golden torque he'd tossed from around his neck onto the floor the night before was still there, which wasn't like Loki, who tended to be fastidiously neat and organized. He went on to the small desk, intending to drop his satchel there, but it was a sticky mess with spilled mead and four tankards filled to various levels. The lip of the third barrel was open, which made Thor's jaw fall open – he hadn't _really_ thought Loki would drink the third barrel – but when he lifted it experimentally he found it still somewhat heavy, so Loki hadn't drunk all of it. A few steps closer to the bedchambers and he spied the fifth tankard overturned in a small puddle on the floor. He turned the doorknob and stuck his head into the room.

Loki was lying face down across the bed on top of the covers, fully clothed, even with one of his boots still on, near the foot of the bed but at something of an angle. Thor was closest to his feet, so he crossed the room to the side of the bed that Loki's face was pressed into.

"Loki?" Thor said tentatively. "We're going to be late to our lessons." No response. He pushed Loki's hair away from his face to try to get a better look, then jerked his hand away from his brother's cold skin. He didn't want to tell anyone about any of this; he knew he would get in trouble. But this was serious. This was _bad_.

He stumbled over his feet as he backed away, then raced out of Loki's chambers and back to the stairs, practically flying upward to the floor his parents occupied.

"My mother, where's my mother?" he demanded of the Einherjar at the top of the stairs.

"In the dining room," he answered, and Thor flew past him to the family's private dining room.

"Mother! You have to come with me!" he shouted as four heads, one his mother's, snapped toward him in surprise.

"What is it?" she asked. But before Thor could respond her expression changed completely and she stood up from the table where a number of small plates with sweets had been laid out. "Has something happened to Loki?"

Thor blinked a couple of times in surprise, but he didn't take the time to ask how she did that. "Yes. Something awful. You have to come now," he insisted, crossing the remaining distance between them as a man and a woman he didn't recognize backpedalled out of the way. He grabbed his mother's hand and tugged hard on it; they started for the door.

"What happened?" she asked, matching Thor's pace now, her hand out of his and on his back, pressing him forward.

"He's turned blue!"

/

* * *

/

Frigga's heart nearly leapt out of her chest and it was all she could do to resist the urge to order the guard to send for Odin as she and Thor fled past him. She didn't understand how this could have happened. Loki was fourteen, and not since the night Odin had fully changed him as an infant had there been even the slightest hint of Jotun form peeking through the Aesir. Could it be something related to the aging process? Odin's work was failing as Loki approached adulthood? They'd always known there could be unexpected side effects from what they'd done. _Whatever it is, we can make it right. He can't find out like this, not now, not when he questions himself so much already…_

They reached Loki's door, still open. Frigga's hand moved to Thor's chest to halt him. "You wait here. Your brother will be fine, but you just wait here for now."

"No," Thor said in no uncertain terms, pushing her arm away and making his return path into Loki's chambers.

Frigga was too worried about Loki to deal with Thor's open defiance, and as she followed him in she was further distracted by the barrels and tankards of mead. _What_ _was he _doing_ last night?_ She had never heard Loki express much of an interest in alcohol, and the one time he'd asked what mead tasted like she'd given him a taste from her own glass. He'd wrinkled his nose and coughed, and hadn't mentioned it again.

She caught up to Thor at the door to Loki's bedchambers, and upon seeing Loki's prone form, fixed two firm hands on his shoulders and two stern eyes on him. "You. Stay. Understand?" Thor nodded reluctantly, still pressing forward, so she remained in place a few seconds longer until she felt more certain he would obey.

She ran around the bed and gingerly reached for Loki's head to lift it up, careful in case his skin burned her. When his cheek and nose came into view she gasped in relief, and it took another second before she realized this wasn't something to be relieved about. Something inside her twisted painfully and a wave of nausea followed. She managed to force it down.

"Thor," she called, and in an instant her other son was at her side. "Help me lift him," she said, already struggling to turn him onto his back. He wasn't so heavy, but the angle was bad, he still wore much of his armor, and he was dead weight. Frigga grimaced as that phrase ran through her mind. "Sit him up against the headboard," she said, letting Thor take over the heavy lifting. He got his brother's body into position and she straightened and arranged his legs. His head slumped down so that his chin touched his chest.

"What's wrong with him?" Thor asked, one hand protectively on Loki's shoulder.

"He's blue because he wasn't getting enough air. From the look of it…and the smell of it…he passed out drunk face-down on the bed. He wasn't able to breathe, Thor, and he was too drunk to wake up."

Frigga leaned into Loki and put her cheek close to his nose. He was definitely breathing, but there was a longer gap between breaths than there should have been. She straightened a little and placed two fingers over the back of his right wrist. His pulse seemed normal, but his skin was cold and clammy and still a little bluish. He had been near death, she knew. Her hands began to tremble, so she placed his hand gently over his stomach and released it as she stared down at him in horror that was rising again in her. Perhaps he would not have died, but he was not fully grown. He was still vulnerable. How much alcohol must he have consumed, though, to get his body into such a state? Fourteen years old. Far too young for such recklessness, when consequences were uncertain. When he wasn't even Aesir, not in the deepest underlying makeup of his body. Drunkenness shouldn't cause such a reaction in an Aesir, even one so young. Frigga hadn't seen anyone looking that blue since Loki was a baby.

She straightened all the way and turned to face Thor, who tried to take a step back, but he'd already backed into Loki's dresser.

"What. Happened. Here," she demanded in a voice of royal authority she rarely had cause to use, rarer still with her children, despite all the trouble they got into.

"He…he was drinking mead," Thor answered in wide-eyed fear.

"I could see that. _How much_?"

"I don't know," Thor said defensively.

"You're going to tell me you know nothing about this? You had nothing to do with it? You weren't a part of it?" she asked, heedless of the anger in her voice. She couldn't imagine Loki doing something like this on his own.

"I…I wasn't here the whole time."

"So you _left_ him like this?"

"He wasn't like this when I left! He was doing his homework. He was fine! I swear he was fine!" Thor shouted. And while it was perhaps an oversimplification, it wasn't untrue. Loki had been awake, and talking, and most definitely not blue.

"So you left him to drink himself into a stupor? He's _fourteen_, Thor. He's your little brother. You're supposed to take care of him."

"I'm sorry, Mother! I didn't know this would happen. I didn't mean-"

"But it did, didn't it?"

Mother and son locked eyes, both consumed by anger and fear.

A soft, low moan from behind Frigga broke the tension. "Stay," she ordered Thor, who had immediately started to go to Loki.

Thor shot her a resentful look but resumed his position by the dresser, where he could look over the bed's footboard.

Frigga leaned in close to Loki, kissed his cool forehead, wrapped both of her hands around his right one. "Wake up, darling. Wake up, my little one," she said softly, repeating variations on the words until she heard a sharp intake of breath and saw Loki's eyes open for an instant, then squeeze tightly shut. He swallowed a couple of times, and Frigga drew back from him, staying just close enough to slip her hands behind Loki's back. She knew what was coming.

When he started to heave she helped guide him down and to his right, so that he emptied the contents of his stomach onto the floor instead of himself. She kept him there, gently rubbing his back while one hand supported his chest, until he stilled and it seemed nothing more would come up. Then she helped him back into a sitting position, and he was limp, so very limp in her arms. He immediately started leaning to his left, slipping and winding up collapsed onto a pillow before she could make it to the other side of the bed, climb up beside him, and push him back up. She maneuvered the pillow out from underneath her and let Loki's head fall onto her arm.

"So cold," he mumbled.

"Thor, get a blanket. Two blankets. And a fur."

He found the items in a trunk against the wall to his left and helped his mother wrap them around Loki, who looked as unconscious as he had when Thor found him.

"Now a glass of water and a basin."

A minute or two later Thor emerged from Loki's bathroom, items in hand. Frigga put the basin on his lap, then held the glass up to his lips. "Take a sip, Loki, just a sip." She started tilting the glass, and his lips parted slightly. "That's it, that's good, my son. Just a sip. Good. Now swish it in your mouth, then spit into the basin."

Loki managed to follow her directions, though she quickly realized she needed to hold his head over the basin and lift it up for him afterward – he was simply too weak to do it himself. She got him to rinse his mouth a second time, but the third time he angled his head away from the glass and against her arm.

"Take this and bring a fresh glass," she said to Thor, now hovering on her left. She handed him the basin and the glass; he took them without a word.

When he returned, she lifted the glass to Loki's lips again, with her left hand holding his head up. Loki wouldn't open his lips, though. "Drink, my love," she said, pressing the glass to his lips.

"Mmmm," he said in what could have passed either for a moan or a whine. His eyes remained closed.

"I know it's difficult, darling, but you must drink. You'll only feel worse if you don't." She continued her words of encouragement and made soft soothing sounds until he'd taken several swallows, barely a quarter of the glass, and made a weak-muscled attempt to knock the glass away. "All right," she said, lowering the glass to her lap before he could make a second, more successful attempt. "But you're going to have to drink more, Loki. And eat something, too."

"Nooo," he said, looking up at her with pitifully squinted eyes. He caught sight of Thor just beyond his mother and his eyes lingered there a moment before they fell closed again.

"Yes. You must. Thor?"

"Yes, Mother?" Thor said, snapping to attention, eager to do some further small but important task to help his brother, whose gaze had just made him crumble on the inside.

"Go find someone to clean up the mess," she said, angling her head to the side of the bed where Loki had thrown up. "And send someone to bring up some warm broth, and notify the guard to send for Eir."

Thor nodded vigorously and turned to sprint from the room.

"Wait," Frigga called. Thor nearly tripped from stopping and turning so quickly. "Bring the broth yourself. And make sure it's plain, unseasoned, and still warm when it gets here. Do it quickly."

Thor hesitated. He didn't want to be away that long.

"Quickly, Thor. Go."

"Yes, Mother," he said, running out into the corridor. "Jorgeir!" he called, before the door to Loki's chambers was even closed behind him. He glanced to the left and right, and on his second look to the right saw the usual guard emerging from the shadows.

"Yes, my prince. What's wrong?"

"My brother is…he's sick. My mother requests Eir come to him immediately."

"I will see to it," Jorgeir said with a quick short bow before trotting to the stairs and disappearing from view again.

He found a servant cleaning in his own room and re-directed her to Loki's, then ran as fast as he could down the stairs and through the corridors to the kitchens. Along the way he couldn't help regretting that the muscle he'd begun to gain had cost him some of the speed he'd had as a child, and Loki with his slender frame could have actually accomplished this task more quickly.

In the kitchen, hurrying yielded to waiting, for although chicken broth was already simmering, it was also already seasoned. One of the cooks set about preparing a small pot of broth with more chicken stock. And Thor stood nearby ready to exercise all of his nascent fifteen-year-old son-of-Odin authority – in the form of shouting – if the woman failed to act with sufficient haste.

The water was brought to a rapid boil with plain chicken stock, and minutes later Thor was bounding up the stairs two at a time, the broth in a sealed glass canister in one hand and a bowl and a spoon in the other. He came to a halt just inside the door to Loki's bedchambers; Eir was standing there on the far side of the bed, her hands over Loki's chest. Loki's eyes were closed and he leaned limply on their mother.

"His breathing is still slow and irregular. You've done well to keep him upright. Don't let him lie down until his breathing returns to normal, and even then allow him only on his side, in case he gets sick again."

"I understand, thank you, Eir. Thank you so much for what you've done, as always."

Eir shook her head. "You've already done most of it. There's little to be done for what ails your son. He'll recover with time, like anyone else. He's just been unusually badly affected. It could be simply because of his youth."

"I thank you nonetheless. You can't imagine how terrified I was when I saw him. I could feel the universe coming to an end."

"I brought the broth," Thor put in from the doorway, since no one had acknowledged or even noticed his presence. And he didn't want to hear about universes coming to an end.

Both women looked up at him; Eir bowed and took her leave.

"Bring it here, Thor."

He did so immediately. "Do you want me to help?"

"No. I want you to leave these with me and go get some plain crackers."

"But why didn't you-"

"Keep your voice down. Eir said he should have something solid that won't upset his stomach. She recommended crackers. So go get some for your brother."

Thor let out a frustrated breath, then gave his mother the canister, bowl, and spoon, and set off back to the kitchen.

Frigga opened the canister to take a test sip; the broth was exactly as she'd ordered, bland and still warm.

She woke him with some difficulty, leaning him more fully against the headboard so she could maneuver around to face him. His eyes were already drooping again when she held the canister to his lips, foregoing the bowl. "Drink a little of this, Loki. It's warm broth. It'll be good for your stomach. It'll make you feel better." He took one sip in instinctive obedience, thereafter making noises of refusal each time she urged him to drink. She'd gotten only one more sip into him and given up the battle by the time Thor returned a second time. Loki's eyes had drifted closed again.

"Here, Mother," Thor said when she again didn't notice his arrival. He held out the plate of crackers. Still sitting facing Loki, she turned toward him to accept the plate. She was crying.

Thor stared at her, then at his silent brother. "Loki!" he shouted, leaping onto the bed and reaching for Loki.

* * *

/

_The next chapter picks up where this one leaves off. Not a good day for Thor as he faces the music - well, sort of - for what he did. Of course, not really a good day for anyone. Loki has some Aesir/Jotun version of alcohol poisoning, which is extremely dangerous and is a possible consquence of binge drinking. But that is the extent of my don't-do-what-Loki-did speech for this chapter. (And, really, much as we love him, he's not much of a role model, if you've seen the movies.) ;-) Not everything that happens on this day will be bad, though. This story is my version of "fluffy." :-O_


	9. Responsibilities & Restrictions

Magic & Mead

**Chapter Nine: Responsibilities & Restrictions**

_Thor stared at his mother, then at his silent, still brother. "Loki!" he shouted, leaping onto the bed and reaching for Loki._

Frigga grabbed him before he got there; Loki's eyelids opened to narrow slits, then closed again. "He's only sleeping, Thor, leave him alone."

Held back by his mother's surprisingly strong grip on his shoulders, Thor kept staring at Loki. It had been a long time since he'd last feared his little brother's eyes had closed for the last time. And his mother hadn't been crying over his still body then.

Frigga let go of him and started picking up crackers that had been knocked from his plate.

"Then what's wrong?" Thor asked in a whisper, sitting back on his knees not far from Loki.

"_Look_ at him!" she exclaimed.

Thor did. And shuddered.

Frigga set the plate aside and used the corner of Loki's fur to dab at her eyes. "I'm not looking forward to this battle," she said, waving one hand toward the crackers. "He wouldn't drink the broth. And Eir says an empty stomach makes things worse. He didn't eat much at dinner. That's my fault."

"How?" Thor asked, still staring at Loki. He didn't see what his mother could have to do with any of this.

"Never mind," Frigga said, thinking of the pastries and milk Loki had consumed a few hours before the feast. She hadn't meant to say it out loud. "Thor…correct me if I'm wrong, but there are _three_ barrels out there in the next room, right?"

Thor nodded, his attention now fully on his mother. He felt his future slipping away before his eyes, replaced with some terrible punishment that could last through his twentieth birthday.

"And you don't know how much he drank?"

Thor shook his head.

"Because you left him."

He nodded minutely, wondered if he'd be punished longer than he'd been alive thus far. Punishment for the long-lived and sturdy Aesir could be harsh and very, very long.

"How much did _you_ drink?"

Thor hesitated. He hadn't expected that question. "About half a tankard." He'd dumped out the mostly full glass he'd left beside the bed earlier that morning. Drinking mead alone wasn't the slightest bit of fun, he'd found.

"Loki surely must have had much more than that."

Thor nodded, reluctantly.

"Have you done this before?"

"Maybe once or twice," Thor said, ducking his head. He wasn't underestimating _that_ much.

"With Loki?"

"No!" he shouted, jerking his head back up.

"Whose idea was this?" she asked as Loki stirred.

Thor's breaths came heavily through his nose. Loki could've come up with a convincing, diverting lie. The only one Thor could think of was to blame it on Loki. But that was hardly fair, under the circumstances. "Mine," he finally said. "He's waking up. Let me try to get him to eat the crackers," he pleaded, both because he wanted to do something to help his brother and because he wanted to escape his mother's inquisition.

Frigga kept her stern gaze on him a moment longer, then relented and handed him the plate.

Loki's eyes were closed, but his wrinkled brow indicated he was at least somewhat awake.

Thor slapped him. Hard.

Frigga gritted her teeth to bite back a sharp reproach. Her way, after all, had not worked. Perhaps Thor's would.

"Loki, wake up. Do you hear me? Open your eyes right now. You're going to eat these crackers. If you don't I'm going to bash your head in. You're going to have to eat your own lunch for once, Brother," Thor ordered loudly.

Loki's eyes slowly opened and slid over toward Thor, sitting on his knees beside him.

"Open your mouth." He picked up a cracker and broke it in half.

"I'll…I'll eat it," Loki rasped, his eyes narrowed in a glare. "Just shut up."

Thor grinned and cast a triumphant look toward his mother, who merely shook her head at him with a disapproving smile…but a smile nonetheless.

Loki had a hard time swallowing the cracker, so Frigga gave Thor the broth to moisten and soften it, and in this way Thor managed to get him to eat five crackers. When he saw Thor breaking a sixth one in half he groaned and put a hand over his stomach.

"I'll get sick," he said.

Thor turned to check his mother's reaction. He was prepared to force-feed Loki if he refused to eat and needed more, but his mother leaned forward and took the crackers and broth from him.

"Thor, you stay with him for a few minutes. I need to go rearrange my schedule."

He nodded and watched as she got up from the bed despite both hands being full and wearing a complicated layered gown, and somehow made it all look elegant. He looked back at Loki, whose eyes were already fluttering closed. He would stay with his little brother all day long, and as many days after that as were necessary.

"Loki, do you feel really awful?" Thor asked once Frigga was gone.

Loki opened his eyes just wide enough and just long enough to shoot him a withering look.

"Well, you look better. Not as blue."

Loki frowned and started scooting downward to get into a lying position.

"No. Eir said you need to sit up."

Loki ignored him and started twisting down onto his stomach, pushing the blankets and fur down onto his legs as he slid down and turned.

Thor sighed and grabbed onto Loki by his upper arms, flipping him back over and into a sitting position. He expected more of a struggle, but Loki was almost limp and only moaned in protest. Less than a minute later he was scooting down again.

Thor watched his little brother with a frown. Eir _had_ said Loki could sleep on his side. Thor didn't know how he could sleep at all with most of his armor still on. "Okay, Loki, have it your way. But only if you stay on your side."

Loki opened his eyes slightly. "The whole bed is my side. You get off it."

Thor laughed. "No, I mean you can't sleep on your back or your stomach."

But Loki was already headed for his stomach again, so Thor maneuvered him onto his side, facing him. He then reached for the arm on top, Loki's right, and found the clasp to release his bracer, then removed the band around his upper arm. He set them both on the bedside table, then pulled off the blankets and worked off the heavy boot Loki still had on his left foot. By the time he'd tossed the boot onto the floor Loki had rolled onto his stomach. Thor rolled him back; Loki weakly tried to push him away. Thor pulled the blankets back up almost to Loki's neck; Loki rolled over again. Thor looked at Loki, suspecting he was doing this on purpose to vex him. He pictured himself moving Loki to a perpendicular position along the headboard and sitting back against his chest – _that_ would hold him in place. Then he pictured Loki beating him on his spine – maybe not the best idea after all. His eyes lighted on the oblong pillow roll pressed along the headboard. He grabbed that and worked around Loki to position it at his back, then placed a regular pillow against his chest, and two pillows under his head. Loki's right arm fell over the pillow at his chest, he sighed in contentment, and he stayed still.

Thor sat back against the headboard relieved and pleased with himself for his solution. No weapons, no fists, but a victory all the same.

"I'm sorry, Loki," he whispered. Loki had already fallen back asleep.

/

* * *

/

"He's supposed to be sitting up!" Frigga exclaimed in dismay when she returned, hurrying over to the far side of the bed.

"I couldn't make him," Thor said defensively. Which wasn't precisely true. He _could_ have made him, but Loki would have been rather unhappy with his methods. "But I kept him on his side like Eir said." Loki hadn't moved since first settling down in the position Thor had maneuvered him into, except that his mouth had fallen open and he was drooling on the pillow.

Frigga leaned over him and put her cheek in front of his mouth. She sighed with relief. His breathing felt regular, deep, and smooth.

"Follow me," she told Thor, straightening up from the bed and stepping just outside the bedchambers where she could still see Loki through the open door.

Thor obeyed, and shifted nervously in front of her. Loki was doing better, and that meant the attention was squarely back on him. And not in a good way.

"I honestly don't know what to say to you, Thor. I'm angry, and I'm disappointed. You've done some foolish things, but I've never known you to do anything quite so irresponsible. Loki could have died. He could have _died_, Thor. Do you understand that?"

Thor's breaths came in short, shaky spurts. "Yes, Mother." It was unimaginable, but for a moment when he'd returned with the crackers the unimaginable had come true, and it was all his fault.

"Tell me what you did wrong."

Thor inhaled deeply, forcing his breath to steady. "I gave Loki mead. I didn't stay with him. And I didn't check on him. I didn't take care of my brother."

Frigga nodded. "You aren't supposed to be drinking mead until you're twenty. And there's a reason for that. Mead is strong, much stronger than wine, and it's meant for adults. I don't ever want to hear of you drinking it again before you've come of age, nor do I want to hear of you giving it to Loki before _he's_ come of age. Understood?"

"Yes, Mother," Thor said with a nod.

"Swear it."

"I swear."

"Your father usually handles the punishments, but I don't want to bother him with this, not when he's in the middle of dealing with this trade war."

At that Thor breathed a sigh of relief; Odin's punishments were usually worse, and at the very least they tended to last longer. His mother was thinking, though, which made Thor nervous.

"For six months," she finally began, and Thor cringed – it wasn't age twenty but when you were fifteen even six months seemed a lifetime – "you are restricted to this floor, the one above it, your classroom, the training grounds for scheduled training only, and whatever duties your father requires you to perform for King Gullveig's visits. Otherwise, you will take your meals in your chambers or ours, or in your classroom. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Mother," he said again. It wouldn't help his case to say anything else. His legs already felt antsy and tense from the thought of six months under such restrictions, but he couldn't complain. It could've been worse. Much, much worse.

"Thor…" Frigga's thoughts drifted back to the conversations she'd had with Loki the last couple of days. They weren't new, not really. They manifested themselves in different ways when they came up, but they had one thread in common: Loki idolized his older brother. "Do you know how much Loki looks up to you? You have to set a good example for him."

"I'm truly sorry, Mother. I had no idea this would happen. I was stupid. I would give anything to undo it."

Frigga frowned. "I know you're sorry. I know you love your brother and didn't mean for any harm to come to him. But I don't want you to have to be sorry. I want you to _think_ next time when foolish ideas come to you." She paused, sighed, took a long look at Loki. "There's nothing more to say about this. Run along to your studies; you've missed half the day."

"But I have to stay with Loki!" Thor immediately protested.

"_I_ will stay with Loki until I'm confident he's recovering. _You_ obey my instructions."

Thor opened his mouth to argue, but his mother's expression turned as hard and unyielding as his father's ever did, and because it was so rare on her it was all the more intimidating. He mumbled his acknowledgement, stepped toward the door to take a last look at Loki, then gathered his books and satchel and left, hanging his head in dejection.

* * *

/

_Loki hasn't been capable of much thinking in the last couple of chapters so his POV has disappeared, but the next chapter is all his POV. He has some catching up to do! The next chapter also includes Eir, who isn't in the movies (no idea if she's in the comics), but she's from mythology and you may also know her from some other fanfiction stories. For some reason I've gotten a bit attached to this character (my version of her anyway), and she also appears in my take on the Loki-punished-by-the-giant-serpent thing which maybe I'll get fully written up at some point and put up here (tentatively titled _Eighteen_), and even in _Beneath_. She is kind of the calm in the storm that is Loki._


	10. Healers & Horses

_Responses to a couple of guest comments below; I normally don't do that (though I always reply if the PM option is there), but these were particularly interesting comments so really wanted to, apologies to those of you who aren't interested, you can of course skip that part._

* * *

**Magic & Mead**

**Chapter Ten: Healers & Horses**

Loki's mouth twitched. With the twitch came a twinge of discomfort. With the twinge came another twitch, and then another twinge, until he became aware of the wet patch of silk on the pillow the side of his face was pressed into. He pushed himself up a little, tried to roll over, found that he could not, and decided he may as well sit up instead.

"Good afternoon," his mother said.

Loki lurched back into the obstacle behind him, blinking heavy-lidded eyes at his mother, sitting there in his bed, a book in her lap. She stared down at him serenely, smiling broadly, as though it were perfectly normal for him to wake up to find his mother reclining on his bed. He brought his fists to his eyes and rubbed them. Perhaps it was just a weird dream.

"How do you feel?"

He dropped his fists and pushed himself up further into a proper seated position. Not a dream, then. "My head hurts. And my tongue feels like it's grown fur. And my stomach feels…bad." He wasn't sure how to describe exactly what that cavernous twisting pit felt like, but "bad" was accurate enough. "And my hand hurts," he added, flexing the fingers of his right hand.

She furrowed her brow at the last. "What did you do to your hand?"

Loki shrugged. Mother didn't really like him to shrug, but converting thought into words was presenting a challenge for some reason.

She took his hand and held it up so that the palm faced both of them. Loki grimaced. It was reddened as though chafed, the top layer of skin cracked and peeling as though severely sunburned. He had never gotten a sunburn on his palms, though.

"Did you burn yourself?"

He shrugged again. The pain in his hand was fading and the pain in his head was growing worse, easily eclipsing it.

"Loki Odinson," she said, gripping his hand less gently by the wrist. "Were you conjuring fire?"

Even through the pounding in his skull he recognized from her tone of voice and the use of his full name that she would not view that as a good thing. "I don't know," he said, managing the words this time. He had a vague memory of seeing a whirling red ball in his palm…but he didn't remember it being made of fire or getting burned by it. "What happened?" he asked, giving in to the urge to lean forward and rest his head on his palms.

Frigga let go of his wrist. "You don't remember drinking mead until you passed out drunk?"

Loki's eyes went wide, hidden in his hands. Mead. Thor. Poetry. He remembered it in jumbled fits and snatches. "No," he lied, words muffled against his arms.

"We can talk about it when you're feeling better. And we _will_ have to talk about it. But for now…"

Unable to see what was coming, Loki let out a startled cry when his mother threw her arms around him and drew him close, fingers pressing hard into his back, then rubbing as though massaging him the way Eir did on his legs or arms if he got muscle cramps after training or those awful random "growing pains."

"Motherrr," Loki whined, squirming.

"I know, I know. Just give me a minute to reassure myself you're alive."

Loki tried to hold back his grimaces and let her do just that, wondering what exactly had happened and how close he'd come to being not-alive that she needed to virtually crush him to believe he _was_ alive.

/

* * *

/

After convincing his mother he was alive, Loki next convinced her to stop worrying and leave him be. Frigga left, but with promises to send Eir to look at his hand. He dragged himself out of bed, went to the window, drew back the heavy curtains, and blinked in surprise at the sun's brightness and position. It was already well past noon. He put his left hand to his forehead and rubbed hard, trying to remember. But trying to remember made his head hurt worse, so he stopped.

He took a good look down at himself for the first time. Other than the circlet on his left arm his armor was all gone – he saw two pieces on the bedside table. On his green tunic was a stain that looked disgusting; one sniff confirmed it _was_ disgusting. With all possible haste he stripped out of everything down to the black short pants and short-sleeved shirt of his underclothes, dumping everything he discarded in the bathroom. He set about looking for the rest of his armor and his boots. He'd just located the second boot – it had somehow wound up under the bed – when a knock came from the main door.

It took a second to get through his pounding skull, but then he remembered Eir was coming.

"Eir, are you alone?" he called.

"Yes, my prince. Your mother sent me to check on your hand."

"Come in," he told her, unconcerned about her seeing him only half-dressed; she'd been his healer all his life and she'd seen him in less.

"What have you done now, Loki?" she asked with a smile, coming to stand before him in the antechamber.

"I don't actually know," he answered, forcing a grin onto his face that still looked more like a grimace.

"Short-term amnesia?"

Loki squinted at her. He hadn't thought of it like that…but he hadn't thought about it much at all, so that was unsurprising. "I guess so. I just remember little pieces of things. Individual images."

"I see. The rest may come back, then. Give me your hand."

He obediently held it out to her, palm up. She traced a feather-light finger over it.

"This has the residue of magic. Loki, do you know how dangerous it is to use magic while intoxicated? You could have hurt yourself or someone else, and much worse than this. Or you could have set your chambers ablaze."

"I don't even remember doing it," he said with a shrug. Eir never scolded him for shrugging.

"Because you were intoxicated. You are unique, Loki. Just as we all are. Your body will not react the same to alcohol as the next. You must not drink to such excess. And if you do drink mead, or even wine, you mustn't do it alone," Eir told him, her voice firm but kind, no trace of the anger he'd seen in his mother.

"I understand," Loki said, signaling his agreement with a nod, and meaning it. Talking to Eir was almost always easy. When he injured himself in some way, his mother would get emotional and overreact, whereas Eir would remain calm and factual.

"This is minor. A single healing stone will suffice to repair the damage. It will still take a day or two to heal fully, though. If you'd come to me immediately I could have healed it fully on the spot." The words were chiding but again there was no anger in her voice and Loki found himself nodding again. Eir reached into the beige satchel slung around her neck and under one arm to pull out a stone. With a sharp clench of her fist the stone crumbled over his palm. Loki watched for the crackling of the energy, still able to detect only part of it. She rubbed the dust gently but firmly into his skin to make sure it was fully absorbed into the flesh that had already begun to heal itself imperfectly. When she released his palm the skin was pinker than usual but looked healthy. Loki looked down past his palm to his long, skinny legs.

"Eir…"

"Yes?"

"Why is my body so different from Thor's?"

"Because you are two different people. Much as many were tempted to think otherwise when you were younger, you and Thor are not twins," she said with a warm smile.

"I know, but we don't look anything alike at all."

"Your skin tone is similar."

"Thor tans and I burn."

"Your eyes are blue like his."

"Not like his. Mine are more gray than blue."

"Your height is similar."

"I've been taller for years."

"There's something in the smile."

"That's not- Really?"

"And something in the heart."

"_Now_ you sound like my mother," Loki said, rolling his eyes.

"Your mother is a wise woman. You should listen to her."

"I do. Usually," he couldn't help tossing in with a smirk.

"Mm-hm. How's your head?"

"I think it might explode."

"Normally I wouldn't do this for a hangover, but just this once, because you're a special case…" She lifted both hands to his temple and spread her fingertips, almost but not quite grazing the skin.

"I'm not sure how I should take that, Eir," he said, keeping his head still for her.

"You may take it however you like, my prince," she answered, smiling serenely.

Loki's posture sagged in relief when she lowered her hands. The stabbing pain had receded to a dull throb that made him realize just how dulled all his senses had become.

"Eir…" he began again, a question he'd had earlier having popped back to mind. He wondered why he hadn't thought to ask her before.

"Yes?"

"If I wanted to have more muscle…do you think I should eat more?"

Eir quickly took in his frame. "No. You aren't underweight. You could change _what_ you eat somewhat. More protein – lean meats, beans, certain cheeses…I can talk to the kitchen and have them tailor your breakfasts and lunches. And I suppose you could add some small snacks before and after your training sessions. Shall I speak with the kitchen workers?"

"Yes, please! And what about special exercises?"

"Loki, some are naturally predisposed to great strength. But muscles also grow from use."

He listened with rapt attention as she named his muscles and explained what kinds of activities would strengthen them. He asked why she didn't teach them these things as part of their formal lessons, and she said she would be glad to do so and would ask his parents' approval for it. He couldn't wait to meet his trainers again, now that he knew what he wanted to ask for. They were only teaching him how to fight and how to use weapons – not how to get stronger.

"Satisfied?" Eir asked over an hour later.

"Yes! Yes, Eir, thank you so much. I didn't know who to ask."

"You can always come to me," Eir said, deeply bowing her head of curly blond-gray hair. "I shall be your healer all my days."

Loki took her hand and kissed the knuckles, on his best behavior and then some – it really was unnecessary formality to kiss her hand when he was in his own chambers and wearing only his underclothes.

She bowed again – also entirely unnecessary under the circumstances – and turned to go.

"Eir? One more question, please?" he said as her hand touched the door handle.

"Of course, Prince Loki," she said, gracefully turning and releasing the door handle as though she'd never intended to leave.

"Can you teach me what you did? How to heal a headache?" Thor occasionally gave him headaches. And if he knew how to heal them with magic, he'd also know how to cause them with magic.

"It would bring me great honor to do so," she said with a nod.

"Perfect! When can we start?"

"When you reach adulthood, my prince."

A sudden wave of anger swept over him. More than five years from now was hardly the answer he'd had in mind.

"Will that be all, young prince?"

"It will. I'll see you when I turn twenty," Loki spat out, childish petulance mingling with that recent taste of the exercise of his position to turn into something ugly.

If Eir was surprised by the sudden change she didn't show it. Her expression never altered; she simply bowed a third time and departed.

Loki stormed over to the small desk, grabbed the heavy horse-head paperweight Thor had given him for his twelfth birthday, and hurled it at the door. It was not well-aimed – weak, tired, and still with a slight headache, he hadn't actually put all that much effort into it. "Why does it always have to wait until I'm an adult?!" he shouted at the door. He yanked out his chair and sat in it, a wave of fatigue passing through him. Soon after the fatigue came the guilt. He should never have spoken so disrespectfully to Eir. Especially not after she had just spent so much time healing him, answering his questions, and teaching him.

But she didn't understand. None of them did. None of them knew how much he already could do with magic. He didn't advertise it, with only rare exceptions due to necessity, as with Ranka. Not since he'd come to understand how much his father disapproved. Even his mother was uneasy with it. Only Thor completely accepted it, though with the occasional teasing. Why did everyone else seem to think it was better for him to stumble around on his own than to have it properly taught like any other skill? "_You don't understand what you're dealing with,"_ his mother had said once when he'd pressed her. But that was the whole point! Why was magic any different from history or nature or cosmology or sword-fighting or any of the other things he studied?

He sighed in resignation. You didn't win arguments with Odin All-Father. Not that he'd had the courage to truly argue in the first place.

Loki stood and walked over toward the door to retrieve the paperweight. He really ought to stop mistreating Thor's gift. It wouldn't be damaged, but it was the principle of the thing. He picked it up, set it on the palm of his healed right hand, and with his left stroked the mane three times. The paperweight quickly transformed itself into a miniature horse that threw back its head and neighed. It was made out of some kind of enchanted material – obviously. Loki had asked incessant questions about it but all in vain; Thor had no idea. He'd seen it among the wares of a traveling merchant on Alfheim when he was there with their father while Loki was home sick, thought Loki would like it, and bought it without asking a thing other than "how much." He knew only what the Light Elf had volunteered, that it was indestructible. Loki scoffed at that. If it was indestructible, he'd asked, then why wouldn't they make _everything_ out of that material? _"I'm just telling you what the merchant told me,"_ Thor had said, growing annoyed that Loki could not simply accept and enjoy his gift. _"Indestructible, hm?"_ he'd said, giving up. _"I think we should test that."_ And then he'd thrown it – in its unnaturally heavy paperweight form – at Thor. Repeatedly. Until Thor finally managed to get to it post-impact before Loki did. _"It may be indestructible, but I'm not, you root-slime!"_ They'd wrestled for a while after that until their energy ran low, then they'd set the magical miniature horse loose in the palace, and _that_ had been a marvelous game, until it ran between the legs of an Einherjar sentry who was sufficiently startled to sound an alarm, and _that_ had been followed by an extremely uncomfortable summons to the throne room. Thor had accepted the full blame, along with the punishment – it was Loki's birthday after all – but Loki could tell by the way Odin looked at him that he knew better.

Loki stroked the mane thrice again and again held a horse-head paperweight. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, trying to clear his mind of random memories, conflicting emotions, anger, and frustration. His eye was drawn to the wall, which was, like his brother, not indestructible. Not by a long shot. A paperweight-sized chip had been knocked out of the marble. _Wonderful_, he thought with a dejected sigh. _Now I'll be in trouble. Trouble on top of trouble_, he added, remembering that Mother had said they would have to "talk" about him getting drunk. He couldn't even remember why he'd done it. He tried to remember again and met less resistance. Thor. It was Thor's idea. They'd both been drinking mead. Lots and lots of it. Was Thor in his own chambers sick with a hangover? No. As soon as he asked himself the question he knew the answer, though it took him another moment to remember _how_ he knew it. Thor had been in his bedchambers already. Shoving moistened crackers in his mouth. Forcing him to sit up when all he wanted in all the Nine Realms was to lie down.

Loki groaned, frustrated that he still couldn't make all of the pieces fit. His eyes slid to the left in thought, but as they did, they lit on something else: a small scorch mark on the wall, only a few marble blocks over from the chipped one. His eyes went wide. He reached out and touched the mark – it hummed faintly with trace magic. A memory as clear as a vision of his combined delight and fear when the red ball he'd made impacted the wall flashed before his eyes. And then it all came back. Not literally all, but enough that he remembered how the drink had quickly changed from an unpleasant fire to a bearable burn to something reasonably agreeable to something effortless and sweet and smooth. He remembered his steady loss of control during the night. He remembered Thor leaving, and continuing to drink without him. He didn't remember much after that. He remembered the reason they'd been practically inhaling mead in the first place: his poem.

His poem! It was still due today. But the afternoon was drawing to a close; it was too late to recite it today. The desk was disorderly – very unlike him – and a little sticky from where he and Thor must have spilled some of the mead. He grabbed and rejected papers with various notes written in something less than his usual neat penmanship until he found the booklet where he'd been toiling over his poem.

"I stand and watch the Falls, / And as I watch I…calls?"

It went on from there, but there was truly no point in continuing. He had written in the "s" after the fact, he could tell by the way it was scrunched up. The meter was all wrong, but that was entirely beside the point. He dropped his head to his desk with a thud that seemed to echo through his head and he moaned. This was the dumbest idea Thor had _ever_ had, and Thor was _constantly_ coming up with dumb ideas.

Loki's head shot back up. This day…he'd lost almost the whole day. He was supposed to have breakfast with his mother. To help select the sweets for the feast for King Gullveig's visit because she'd liked his ideas.

_King Gullveig's visit!_

Loki's mouth fell open in horror. He was in danger of missing something even more important.

* * *

/

_In the **next chapter**, Loki's really lousy day just keeps getting better. Okay, actually, Loki's lowest moment and highest moment both are to come in the next chapter._

_Couple of **responses** to guest reviewers - Guest (12/30): Thanks so much for your impassioned comments! You know, while I would apportion the blame differently than you (Thor has more experience with alcohol than Loki, albeit not by much, so while he did this out of ignorance and not ill-intent he really should have thought it through a bit more, particularly the leaving him alone part; and Loki was simply trusting and naive) you are absolutely getting at something I wanted to include in this story. There are plenty of "all the problems lay at Odin's feet" stories out there; I try as much as possible not to repeat stuff seen in other stories, otherwise it would be boring for me and probably for you. So I try to present a family in which no one is perfect, and everyone has made mistakes. Frigga is in a way overcompensating - she has always worried more for Loki because of his particular circumstances (the whole Jotun thing), and also as Odin and Thor began to gravitate more toward each other she tries to fill in that gap for Loki. If you asked Frigga if she is playing favorites with Loki, she would tell you no (but she would be wrong); same with Odin toward Thor. Decisions are being made out of good intentions - but bad decisions can also be made out of the best of intentions. Favoritism can really wreck a family. I do cut Frigga more slack than you - one thing to keep in mind is this is a Loki-centric story, but underlying the conception here is definitely that Frigga also has a good relationship with Thor and spends time with him as well - it's just that in the current circumstances Thor is busy with his father. But does Frigga spend more time with Loki overall, yes, she definitely does. She is not a perfect parent, and I really appreciate that you recognized that even though I never overtly point out those imperfections in the story. (In fact, I suspect readers who strongly favor Loki will view this Frigga in a very favorable light. As for me, actually, I really love them all.) Maybe food for thought for other readers as well? Anyway it was such an interesting comment I really wanted to be able to respond.**  
**_

_jaquelinelittle: Yes, Loki is rather naive here, maybe this will bring that to an end? He's used to Thor being an awful liar and for probably the first time in his life Thor had a story behind his lie with enough truth in it to make him able to pull it off, so Loki trusted him. I think this is vaguely addressed a bit more somewhere down the line... But mainly I wanted to be able to respond to let you know that Loki still needs a poem for his class and he'd like to know if he can use yours! ;-) Happy New Year to you to, and to everyone!_


	11. Fathers & Forgiveness

_Loki's worst moment, Loki's best moment...**  
**_

**Magic & Mead**

**Chapter Eleven: Fathers & Forgiveness**

_King Gullveig's visit!_

Loki's mouth fell open in horror. His father had agreed to let him join Thor today in the meetings to prepare for the visit. He shot up out of the chair, knocking it over in his haste. Back in his bedchambers he waved his hand over the bedside table to see the exact time. If he hurried he would not be too late after Thor. But he would have to _really_ hurry.

At least he didn't need to be in his formal attire. He ran to his wardrobe and grabbed the first pants and tunic his hands fell on – brown leather and maroon with small silver accents, at least it didn't clash. The armored boots weren't yet put away so he grabbed those and yanked them on as quickly as he could. He smoothed his hair back with his hands, took a quick glance in the mirror over his dresser, and declared it good enough given the circumstances.

Then began the race through the palace. His legs actually gave out on him on the last flight of stairs down in the private wing, and he tried but failed to catch himself. An Einherjar emerged from the shadows of the landing to help the young prince to his feet, but Loki pushed him away. "I'm fine, I'm fine!" he called, already limping around the corner. He didn't think he'd hurt himself, but a muscle in his left calf – most likely the soleus, he recalled from Eir's lesson – had clenched up for some reason and was a bit painful, but it didn't get worse or prevent him from walking, like the other muscle cramps he sometimes got.

He entered the throne room from the side entrance, using a corridor that connected the public and private areas of the palace, but it was empty save a token presence of guards. He realized he didn't actually know where Thor was meeting their father; he'd just assumed Thor would know and they'd go together after their lessons. But then he noticed the Einherjar at the door to the study standing at particularly sharp attention. The door was closed. He tried to keep the limp from his gait as he hurriedly crossed the gleaming expanse, right in front of the throne, and tried very hard to look like he was supposed to be there as he approached the Einherjar blocking the door. Which should be easy because he _was_ supposed to be there, but somehow still felt like he wasn't.

The guard hesitated, but at the last second before Loki would've had to come to a halt in front of him he stepped aside and Loki grasped the doorknob and smoothly entered, rather pleased with himself.

Whoever had been talking fell silent and five pairs of eyes – or rather, four pairs and his father's single eye – focused squarely on him. Loki froze. His father, his brother, and three advisors including the trade advisor stared back at him, all in their very finest of fine formal garb. Odin's face, half obscured behind his gleaming horned helmet and eye patch, was particularly expressionless in his stare. And Loki knew what that expressionless stare meant. Trouble. His mouth went unbearably dry and he tried to lick his lips. Loki thought he should speak first, to try to explain himself, but his father beat him to it.

"What are you doing here, Loki? Thor said you were ill."

"I…I was. But I'm feeling better now. And I thought…I thought I should join you. But Thor didn't dress up before so I didn't think I needed to, and…I…I can go change." Loki felt his cheeks coloring. His father sometimes made him tongue-tied, especially when he looked ready to pass judgement on all of Asgard, but he couldn't recall ever doing _this_ badly.

Odin approached him steadily, face still impassive, looking down at Loki through a single lowered eyelid. He passed Gungnir from his right to his left hand, and before Loki could consciously wonder what that meant, his father was right in front of him, grasping the hair at his neck and leaning down. Loki froze stiff again. He could feel Gungnir brush his right arm and fear flooded through his body. He desperately wanted to catch Thor's eye but he could see nothing more than the unyielding armor over his father's broad chest.

The hand on his hair disappeared after no more than a few seconds, and Odin straightened up and took a step back. "Gullveig and his advisors will be meeting us here any minute, and you come here sick from drink?"

It took another moment for the shock to fade before Loki responded, and even then it was a feeble, "No, I…" that he found himself unable to complete.

"Go back to your chambers and stay there. I don't want to see you at the feast tonight or at any of the rest of the festivities in honor of Gullveig's visit."

"But…I…" The words slipped out before he could stop them, and he felt like he was burning with shame over them. Loki had learned early on that arguing with Odin All-Father did not make things better, and in fact frequently made them worse.

"Go now, Loki."

His father was already turning away, and it was only then that Loki was finally able to see Thor again. He was about to say something. Loki quickly shook his head at him, hoping no one else would notice. There was no reason for them both to get in trouble. Thor still looked conflicted when Loki said, "I apologize, Father. I won't disturb you further." He turned to leave, catching Thor looking down guiltily at his feet on the way out. He hoped Thor would make a better effort at hiding his feelings than that, or they'd still both wind up in trouble.

He was just slipping out of the throne room the way he'd first entered when he heard the light ringing of his mother's laughter; he peered from the shadows of the doorway and saw her walking in from the main entrance on King Gullveig's arm, three advisors Loki had seen at the feast trailing politely behind. Loki glowered at them. How was _he_ supposed to know Gullveig was arriving a day early, turning today's meeting formal? And how was he supposed to know that among Gungnir's many magical abilities was detecting hangovers? He watched until they disappeared into the study and the Einherjar took his place in front of the closed door. Then he did as he was told and returned to his chambers, limping in body and spirit.

/

* * *

/

Back up in his chambers, Loki soaked in the bath until his skin wrinkled. When he finally got out he felt marginally better – physically _much_ better. His soleus muscle had relaxed, his stomach had fully settled, and only the minor headache remained. He downed two glasses of water then pulled on the nightclothes his mother called celadon and he called light green.

He set about tidying up the antechamber and bedchamber, what the servants hadn't already taken care of quickly while he'd crept away for a few minutes. He scrubbed at the scorch mark on the wall, then gave a try at magically reducing it further, and was encouraged to be left with only the tiniest of marks, undetectable if you weren't looking for it, and no trace of energy disturbance at all. The chipped marble was another matter. He didn't know how to fix that with either magic or chisels and mortar.

Finally he sat down to start over on his poem, in the playroom that was now a study but that still sometimes deserved to be called a playroom despite all his protests to the contrary. Tonight it was all work, though. He was hungry and tried not to think about it, then took the opposite tack, channeling his longing for food into a longing to be a droplet of water and be a part of the Grand Falls. It seemed a bit overly dramatic to his ears, but by the time he was finished he felt it met all the technical requirements and had a certain artistic merit as well.

With a certain amount of pride he closed the booklet with the new version of the poem, stood up from his desk, and started to walk toward his balcony. He didn't make it. Instead he stood glued to the floor a few steps away from it, staring at the far wall opposite the door. The thick marble wall that was unexpectedly marred by a dinnerplate-sized hole some two feet up from the floor. Loki stared in wide-eyed shock for a long moment, then remembered the unexplained injury to his right hand. He lifted the hand up to stare, blinking, at first his palm, then the wall, then his palm, then the wall. _I did that?_ he asked himself again and again, even though he knew there was no other explanation. He didn't know if he'd made fire or gathered some other form of energy, but he'd tried conjuring fire once before on a simple candle, and after days of exhausting himself for hours on end a flame had finally sprung up. Unfortunately the flame had been twice as big as the candle and Loki had burned his face so badly the scars took nearly a month to fully heal.

Loki crept toward the hole. The marble was blackened around the edges. He peered through, and he could see just a little into the storage room beyond, one of a few small rooms that separated his and Thor's chambers. Whatever had been on the shelf behind the wall there was gone. He didn't worry about that room, though; only the servants went in there, and it was not among their duties to report his activities. The days of nursemaids were long gone. His side of the wall was another story. He stared at it with a solid frown. He was going to have to learn how to repair marble, one way or the other. In the meantime, he pushed a chest-high bookcase a few feet to the left and covered the evidence of whatever it was precisely that he'd done.

It was getting late, but having slept half the day away Loki wasn't tired. There was still something he needed to do – two things, actually: make a less perfunctory apology, and find out the precise terms of his punishment. Besides, he was getting so hungry he didn't think he'd be able to sleep, anyway.

He opened the door to his chambers and stuck just his head outside. "Jolgeir?" he called tentatively, voice barely above a whisper.

"It is Thidrek, my prince," the guard on duty said a moment later, looking eerie and fearsome in the flickering torchlight.

"Ah, good evening," Loki said. It was later than he'd realized; the guard shift had already changed. "Could you let me know if my parents have returned?" he asked meekly, all thoughts of ordering guards around gone.

"I shall inquire immediately," Thidrek said, fading back into shadow, not for the first time leaving Loki impressed. Thor thought they were creepy.

A few minutes later a knock came, Thidrek informing him that the king and queen had just returned. Loki threw on a matching celadon/light-green robe and a pair of simple leather slippers, took a deep breath, and made his way up the stairs and through the vestibule, to the ornate gold double doors which opened to the royal chambers that occupied the entire floor. The guards were expecting him and stepped aside for him to enter; Loki nodded his thanks.

With trepidation he fought to keep a lid on, Loki wandered from room to room, finally hearing voices from his father's dressing room. He turned toward it. He stopped short when he realized they were talking about him.

"-telling you you're overreacting. I was sixteen the first time I got drunk on mead."

"Just because you did something foolish and dangerous doesn't make it right. And Loki is only fourteen." His mother's voice was angry, and it startled him to hear his name spoken in the midst of that anger, even if it wasn't currently directed at him.

"That's not-"

"And Loki is not-"

"I _know_ what Loki is, Frigga. And what he is not. But he's fine now, you said so yourself. No harm has come of it. Let him blunder about in his folly of youth. Loki isn't a little child anymore. You have to stop treating him like he's going to break."

The voices – his mother's now, still angry – were getting steadily louder, approaching his location. He took several quick steps backwards, but realized he wouldn't make it out of the sitting room he was in before they emerged, so he reversed course and walked confidently forward, with no time to think about the strange things he'd overheard.

"Father, Mother," he greeted, having missed whatever they'd said at the end.

"Loki!" Frigga exclaimed in surprise. She cast a quick nervous glance at Odin that Loki probably wouldn't have noticed had he not overheard what they'd said, then rushed forward to throw her arms around him. She just as quickly pulled back and held him by the shoulders at arm's length, examining him carefully, then lifting his right hand to inspect it.

"I'm fine, Mother," he said, hoping to preempt any more of this, highly conscious of his father's heavy gaze. His mother was still in her dark blue gown and dripping with sapphires, while his father had already shed his outer layers and was in a dark blue tunic and leather pants.

"Father," he began, sidestepping her; thankfully she dropped her arms and permitted it. "I wanted to sincerely apologize for interrupting your meeting this afternoon. I thought that I should still try to attend so I could observe and learn, but I should have asked about the nature of the meeting before just showing up, and with the condition I was in I never should have gone in the first place. I'm sorry I embarrassed you."

"You're a child, Loki, You made a child's mistake," he said after a moment.

Loki bristled at these words. He wasn't a child. He hadn't been technically a child by the Asgardian definition since he'd turned ten and become a youth. In less than six more years he would become a man. But there was technical and then there was perception. If you were several thousand years old, fourteen must seem little different from infancy, only without the diapers, even though his father had just said otherwise to his mother. His youngest tutor had recently celebrated his 100th birthday, and the other tutors still called him a youth.

"But your apology is that of a young man. It is accepted," Odin said after a further moment's thought and heavy gaze, to Loki's immense relief.

Frigga spoke up. "No more mead for you or Thor until you're 20, do you understand me?"

"Yes, Mother," he said with a bobbing nod. "I don't think I'll drink it again _ever_."

His father chuckled at this. "We'll see."

Whether his father believed him or not – and Loki did mean it – he was just glad the mood had lightened. He _hated_ it when his father was angry with him. But then he realized his mother had mentioned Thor. He had no idea how much she knew about what had happened, and could only hope Thor wasn't in trouble too now. He had to worry about himself before he could worry about Thor. But perhaps he could keep things light a bit longer in the meantime.

"Father, would you tell me, please, what kind of magic you used to know why I was sick?"

Colossal mistake. All levity disappeared from Odin's face. "No magic was necessary, Loki. My nose was sufficient for the task."

Loki felt faint with humiliation. What he would've given to turn into a chisel-toed mole so he could dig his own hole straight through the marble floor and disappear.

"You're all better now, though, yes?" Frigga hurriedly put in. "You were breathing poorly before."

"I was?" Loki asked, grateful for the distraction from his father telling him in his All-Father way that he'd stunk. He didn't remember having any problems breathing. "Yes. I feel fine. Just…"

"What? What is it, Loki?" she asked, creeping forward again.

"I…I don't know the conditions of my punishment. May I send for something to eat?"

"You haven't eaten anything? All day then? Of course you can send for something. I'll do it myself."

"After indulging in such excess, it may be good for him to know its opposite," Odin said.

"He was sick! He must eat."

"Of course he must. I was simply making a point." Frigga huffed and excused herself, and Odin continued. "There are no further conditions, Loki. Your mother tells me you've endured your own punishment, and I have enough familiarity with that to know you will have learned from this experience. Do not leave the private wing of the palace until the festivities are over and Gullveig is gone the morning after tomorrow. Beyond that you may do as you wish. But I expect you to behave more responsibly in the future."

"I will, Father, I promise."

"Good. Now you go on back to your chambers. Your mother will have ordered you a feast for ten by now," he said with one of those gentle smiles Loki cherished.

"All right. Father…"

"Yes?"

"Did you ever make such a childish mistake?" Loki asked, his open face the picture of innocence.

Odin pursed his lips and Loki could tell he was trying to hold back laughter. His father offered his hand, and Loki eagerly clasped it. "I know it's difficult to believe, but I was a child once too, Loki."

Loki grinned up at him and his face turned stern, but it was only mock-stern, and Loki broke into laughter.

His father tugged on his hand and they made their way back through the maze of rooms to the golden doors. "Good night, Loki," his father said, releasing his hand.

Loki spontaneously threw his arms around his father. "I love you, Father. I'm sorry I disappointed you today."

Odin returned the hug after a brief moment of surprise. "It's already forgiven, Loki. We needn't speak of it again. Unless you repeat the mistake."

"I won't. I _swear_ it, I won't," Loki said, face pressed to his father's chest. He promised things often, and sometimes meant them and sometimes not. He swore things rarely, and almost always meant them. This he now meant a thousand times over.

"I love you too, Son. Even when you make mistakes. Never doubt that."

Loki basked in that like warm sunshine after a gray mountain winter, so rarely were such words heard from his father's lips. Aglow with the light of his father's love, he returned to his chambers where Frigga soon arrived followed by a servant bringing up hot leftovers from the night's feast – not enough for ten but instead all carefully selected to be gentle on his stomach. Full of giddy affection Loki hugged her with abandon and she laughed and let him cling, conscious that he was indeed no longer a little child, and this type of cuddling with him would soon be no more than precious memories.

Loki ate his late supper with gusto and consciously pushed aside all his worries until the next day, which for once he found easy to do, because all that mattered was right with the realm.

* * *

/

_Some of my long rambling-ish thoughts:  
_

_This is quite possibly the fluffiest I've ever gotten in anything I've ever written, but it's in there deliberately. I wanted to show that the relationship between young Loki and Odin which looked very loving in the movie Thor - that this relationship really did exist. (Okay, Odin did say something pretty weird and potentially damaging with the "both of you were born to be kings" thing, but doesn't he sound warm and loving when he says it? More bad coming from good intentions? I don't know what exactly he was meant to be trying to say in the movie [that he thought would come off as positive instead of quite possibly making one son really jealous]. But never fear, I have my own interpretation of it in _Beneath_ actually, hahaha, though it is very very very near the end.) In any event, I wanted to show that yes, Odin does genuinely - and deeply - love Loki, but that he's not good at showing or discussing his feelings and he relates better to Thor for a number of reasons including that Thor, like Odin, needs less verbal and physical acknowledgement of feelings whereas Loki thrives on overt affection and needs it to feel secure - Odin isn't good at giving him that._

_Loki's "nightmare" version of that overheard conversation between Frigga and Odin (in which yes, they're talking about him being Jotun, and Frigga's concern that with him still young and growing, they really don't know what effect things like this will have on him. The same as an Aesir, or not?) along with Thor feeding Loki crackers is found in "Ch. 21: Breakthrough," in _Beneath_._

_A couple of you have asked why they don't want Loki studying magic; I'll answer here for one I couldn't respond to and any others who may have wondered. There's a reason for it...and the answer is found in the endless backstory in my head. (I may need some mental health care, I'm not sure.) Loki doesn't know the answer and that was his POV so for him it's essentially a typical teenager's "why don't they let me do X?" It goes back to an incident when Loki was three, and if I ever write it up it'll be titled _Like Any Other Child_, it's mentioned on my profile now. The answer is also kind of hinted at in the hole-in-the-wall and candle bit above, and in this line from Ch. 10: "And if he knew how to heal [headaches] with magic, he'd also know how to cause them with magic." Which sounds kind of disturbing (and is, a bit, because he thinks of it so quickly!) but isn't meant to be "oh, Loki is evil!" It's kind of a natural child's/teen's still-trying-to-figure-out ethics and morality kind of thing. I mean, if when you were a kid you knew how to like snap your fingers and give headaches to someone who was annoying you to death, might you have done it? You're not killing the other kid, all he/she has to do is pop a couple of Tylenol, no biggee, right? So the idea then also is that while Loki could do a lot of good with magic, he could also do quite a lot of serious bad, intentionally or unintentionally, without understanding the consequences.  
_

_And finally, jacquelinelittle, I enjoyed all your poems but you totally made my day with this one (it's in the reviews). This is truly fabulous and I'm honored. Maybe this is what Loki wrote for his next assignment. Pasting it here for broader reading pleasure, from Viking poet jacquelinelittle who must sip from the Mead of Poetry:_

_"Well, poetry is useless. I can't see why I should bother."_  
_ Or so I did lament to my drunkard of a brother._  
_ He sighed and he swore mead would make it very easy._  
_ But three barrels for a single man can make your stomach queasy._

_And now I've _really_ gone and reneged on my promise not to write massive Author's Notes here...sorry!  
_


	12. Brothers & Boredom

**Magic & Mead**

**Chapter Twelve: Brothers & Boredom**

The worries came back easily enough the next day, though they didn't seem as troubling now as Loki rode the coattails of the euphoria of the evening before. The first day of festivities had begun yesterday afternoon and the second would run all day today, and the palace – the part of it Loki was restricted to – was dead quiet. It wasn't every day a ruler of another of the Nine Realms made an official formal visit, and nearly all of the servants had been reassigned for the duration, not to mention Loki's parents and brother who had disappeared early – Loki checked. At least that meant Thor wasn't being confined too.

"_I know what he is, and I know what he isn't."_

_What am I, and what am I not? I'm not as strong as Thor? I don't take after Father enough? I'm not good enough?_

But whatever it meant, Loki was less concerned about it now, after his father's words of love and affection the night before. He would try harder, he would get stronger, he would be better.

Now, left quite literally alone with his thoughts for the day, Loki worried mostly about Thor. Thor apparently hadn't gotten sick like he had. Surely the ten months between them didn't make _that_ much difference. So why was Loki apparently half-dead, barely able to breathe – not that he entirely believed that to be true – and Thor was there slapping him to wake him up and get him to eat something. Maybe Thor was stronger when it came to both muscles and mead. Loki rolled his eyes. _That_ would be just wonderful. Except that it didn't matter, he reminded himself, because _he_ was never touching the stuff again. Anyway, more likely Thor simply hadn't drunk as much. And as he thought about it, he remembered Thor saying something to the effect that Loki was the one with the poem to compose, so Loki was the one who had to drink the mead. But Thor was drinking too, he knew it.

He took a deep breath and rubbed his forehead. He _still_ had a slight headache. Barely noticeable, except when he tried to think too hard.

From the balcony off of his study he could watch some of the activity outside, tiny street musicians and sidewalk merchants and crowds of passers-by, but it only reminded him of what he was missing out on, so after a few minutes he went back inside. He wished he could be a part of the day's events. He knew he wouldn't embarrass his father _today_. He would be on his best behavior, he would polish every piece of armor himself before putting it on, and he wouldn't even _think_ complaints about its weight, much less voice them aloud.

Loki sighed. There would be another opportunity to show his father how proud he could make him.

He remembered he had a book he hadn't read yet; his mother had picked him up two during her last visit to Vanaheim, and he hadn't gotten around to the second one yet, on the customs of Vanaheim's reclusive mountain dwellers. He curled up with it on the leather sofa in his study.

_M & M_

* * *

_M & M_

Loki took his lunch, a little different from what he normally ate thanks to Eir, apparently, in the garden, alone with the birds and the squirrels and the turtles and a lone hedgehog. His dinner he took at the small desk in his antechamber, now cleaned of spilled mead. Both meals were boring and verged on miserable; while breakfast was usually a solitary affair, he rarely had lunch alone and couldn't remember ever eating dinner alone.

After dinner he went to Thor's chambers and waited. He entertained himself by going through Thor's things. When he got to the study – and in Thor's case it really was still a playroom – he hefted one of their old wooden practice swords and fought an imaginary enemy all around the room. When he tired of that he opened up Thor's desk drawer and sealed a few random objects in place; Thor would splinter the wood before he'd be able to detach them. Still bored, still waiting, he rearranged all the furniture, turning the desk to face into a dark corner and grunting and groaning with the effort of moving the leather sofa to face the wall with the balcony. With the drapes open it would provide a nice view over Asgard. With the drapes closed, as they were now, it would provide a nice view of the drapes. He was admiring his labors from the center of the room when at last he heard the outer door open.

"Thor!" he shouted and ran out into the anteroom.

Thor dropped a bracer with a clatter. "What are you doing here, Loki? If I'd had a sword you'd be dead." He was of course exaggerating. He was only a little startled. They'd shared the same chambers until Loki's tenth birthday, and neither yet felt much of a sense of proprietorship about his chambers, or was overly surprised by his brother's presence there.

"How was it all?" Loki asked, hovering eagerly, starved for company, while Thor dropped his armor all over the floor, not even bothering to discard it in his normal haphazard manner on the shelves where it actually belonged. "All the events? The meetings with King Gullveig, the special feast?"

"Soooo boring. I couldn't take part in anything. Just stand there and watch and listen to all the advisors talk about their wives or their land or whatever other boring things." Thor straightened up from his armor-shedding to face Loki. "Why aren't there any women advisors?"

"How should I know? It's just always been that way, I guess. But what about the trade war? Did they get it resolved?"

Thor waved a hand and worked off the rest of the armor. "They did that last night." He started on the leather. "They didn't want it hanging over Gullveig's actual visit. He entered the horseback race, can you believe that? Father had to ask our best contestants to make sure he finished well. And then at the end it was just a lot of drinking and story-telling. Some of the stories were interesting at least, I guess."

"I wish I could've heard them. I wish I could've been there for it all."

"About that…," Thor began, now free of all the pieces that added to his tunic.

"It's all right. I'm just glad you didn't get in trouble, too."

"Is that what you think? I can't go anywhere but all these meetings, lessons, our floor, and Mother and Father's floor. For six months."

"Oh," Loki said, his face falling. "That's a lot worse than what I got. Private wing until Gullveig leaves."

Thor grimaced. "You shouldn't have been punished at all, Loki. I'm sorry. It was all my fault."

"It _was_ dumb. Does drinking mead really help you compose poetry? Because apparently it made me forget basic grammar."

"Loki…don't hate me, all right?" Thor asked, approaching his brother but only meeting his gaze in fleeting moments. It seemed so funny at the time, and so completely stupid and flat-out mean now.

Loki's brow furrowed. "I could never hate you, Thor. Never," he repeated.

"Try to remember that after I tell you this. Because I kind of hate myself right now. I made up that whole story about poetry and mead. I mean, about me, anyway. It seems like it works for the adults," he couldn't resist adding with a bit of his typical defensiveness. "I just thought it would be funny to see you get drunk."

"But…I don't understand. You were drinking mead too."

"Not really," Thor said sheepishly. "I was sipping. I never had more than half a tankard. You were already pretty far gone when it stopped being fun and I left. And you kept drinking. And you turned blue because you weren't breathing right. You could have died, and it would've been my fault. I don't know how I could have gone on living if you…. Sorry," Thor said, mumbling the apology, embarrassed now over his words as well as his actions. It was strange, but there were some things that seemed perfectly natural to feel and considerably less so to speak aloud, even if they were true. They were ThorandLoki, different parts of one thing. Brothers. Thor would've done anything to protect Loki, except apparently protect him from Thor himself.

"You…you _tricked_ me?" Loki asked, stunned, trying to soak up what his brother had just explained. Thor had lied to him, and he believed him?

"I guess so."

"Hm."

"What?" Thor didn't feel like he deserved his brother's forgiveness, but he desired it badly, regardless.

"I don't know whether to be mad at you or impressed."

"Impressed?" Thor asked skeptically.

"_You_ tricked _me_, Thor. That's impressive – in a way. But why did you…why did you want to do that to me? I didn't know what I was doing."

"Neither did I, obviously. I swear, I never meant to hurt you. I just…it was a spur of the moment idea, I really just thought it would be fun to see you not be so serious all the time."

Loki frowned. Thor was right. The more he thought about it, the less impressive it was sounding. Instead it was sounding hurtful. "You got me completely barred from everything surrounding King Gullveig's visit, after I had to earn my way into those meetings you're so bored with. I humiliated myself in front of Father and almost in front of King Gullveig. How could you do that to me?" Loki demanded, getting angrier as he spoke. He recognized now what brand of hurt this was: betrayal. He _trusted_ Thor, and Thor had taken advantage of that and betrayed him because he was bored and thought embarrassing his brother would alleviate the boredom.

"I don't know what else to say, Loki. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. Mother's right, I wasn't thinking. I'm the older brother, and it's my job to protect you, and instead I put you in danger. I won't let it happen again. I wish I could undo it, but I don't know how. Is there something I can do to…I know it can't make up for it, but something, anything to make it better?" Thor begged. He could take fighting with Loki, but not this. Not something this serious. Not Loki looking all wounded and hurt. By him.

"Do Mother and Father know you did it on purpose?" Loki asked after a moment. He didn't have that impression from the conversation with them last night.

Thor took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "No. They know it was my idea to give you the mead, at least Mother does. I don't know how much Father knows about any of it. But I'll tell them the whole truth, if that's what you want." _What's six more months of my life?_

Loki thought about it for a minute. It wouldn't change his own circumstances, except perhaps to win him some more sympathy. But things had ended on such a good note with his father that there seemed little point in dredging it all up again. And Thor would just get into more trouble than he was already in. "No. Don't do that. Give me some time. Maybe I can think of something."

"All right. Anything. I…I was really scared when I found you all blue like that. And then later…" he began, unable to finish the sentence, remembering when he'd thought Loki had died. He put an arm around Loki's shoulders and pulled him into an awkward hug. "I love you, you know, Brother."

"I know. I love you, too. I still could never hate you," Loki said, returning the embrace and finding less discomfort in it than Thor.

Thor squeezed Loki tighter, then spun around and busied himself with collecting his armor, hating the awkwardness, wondering when it had appeared. All part of growing up, he supposed, which was mostly good, but had its downsides, too.

Loki let go of his anger at Thor, at least for the moment. Besides, Thor had agreed to owe him one, and Loki could milk that for a long time to come. A hurt look and a "_But you almost killed me"_ could earn him far more than one simple favor. It was hard to stay mad at Thor anyway. "So how _did _you get so much better at poetry?" he asked out of the blue, remembering how this whole thing had started.

Thor groaned and sank down onto a deep wooden bench; Loki settled down next to him. "I'd show you, but I'm not allowed to go there now."

"Go where?"

"Anywhere," Thor said, making a face. "The Hall of Tapestries. All the way in the back of the top floor there's a big room where the weavers come and make repairs to any damage found on the tapestries. And-"

"I know about that. I've been there. We went there together, last year. Bergulf took us there for one of our lessons on Asgardian culture."

"Right. Well, one day when you were in bed sick and it was pouring rain outside I got bored, so I went back there. And when I went in that room to see what they were working on, I saw another door off to the side, by the caretaker's office, and it turns out there's a kind of storage area there with a small library, all books full of poems and sagas and stories you never heard of. The ones that aren't famous and nobody recites at feasts."

"Probably an overflow area, books that don't fit in the main collection. But…what does…you've been doing _research_ for your poems?" Loki asked, incredulous. Thor was plenty capable of learning what he needed to for his lessons, but he was easily bored and even frustrated by sitting still for classroom studies and tried to put as little additional time as possible into it outside the classroom.

"Ahh, not exactly," Thor answered, looking down at his hands and pulling at a torn fingernail. "I look through the poems in the books there and I kind of…borrow pieces of them."

Loki stared, blinking heavily. "You cheat?" Neither of them had ever cheated in their lessons and assignments, as far as Loki knew. They often did their homework assignments together, but they were allowed, as long as one boy wasn't doing the assignment on his own for the other to copy.

"Not totally, just pieces, like I said. It's more like…inspiration," Thor said with a forced grin. He knew exactly what it was; he wasn't very good at lying even to himself. But he _hated_ poetry. And he despised sitting down counting syllables instead of expending his considerable energy outdoors.

"Sure. So Ulfid knows all about your source of inspiration then, right?" Loki asked with mild sarcasm.

Thor looked horrified. "Of course not. And you keep your mouth shut. You can use it too, now that you know. Maybe that can be my favor to you."

"Oh, you must have been pilfering the mead supplies again, Brother," Loki said, swinging his leg over to hit Thor's. "You aren't clearing this debt anywhere near that easily. And I'm not going to cheat. I can't believe Mother actually told me to ask you to help me. If she only knew."

"Loki, please don't tell. I won't see daylight until I'm twenty." He didn't think Loki would do it, but he wasn't sure if Loki had really forgiven him. He hadn't explicitly said so.

"I wouldn't betray _you_ like that," Loki responded, enjoying the chance to needle Thor, who had the good sense to look genuinely guilty. "But no more cheating, or I _will_ tell."

"Inspiration," Thor grumbled. Loki really had something over him now, and he knew his little brother would make him pay, and pay, and pay. Loki was clever that way.

"Call it what you want. Just don't do it anymore. If I have to suffer through it, so do you. Maybe we can help each other out."

"I just don't see why it matters so much. Father doesn't compose poetry, not much anyway, so why should I have to?"

Loki rolled his eyes. "Are you through making excuses? Just tell me you won't do it anymore."

"Fine, _Mother_," Thor said with a grumpy sigh. "I won't. It's not like I'm going to have anything better to do with my time for the next six months anyway."

"We'll come up with something so you don't have to stay cooped up inside the whole time. We could ask for more scheduled combat training. Besides, you're going to have a hard time getting much use out of your study."

Thor had been looking down at his now bare feet. He nodded, then looked up at Loki with narrowed eyes. "What did you do?"

"Nothing much. You dealt with boredom your way, and I dealt with it mine."

Thor glared at him a moment longer, eyes still narrowed, then shot up and ran to his study. Loki followed him.

Thor stood in the middle of the room. "Is this all?" he asked when Loki stood in the doorway.

"Mmmm…there might be a few surprises," he said with a shrug.

"Loki Odinson."

"Yes?" Loki answered with an innocent smile.

"Grab a sword."

Loki grinned and ran over to snatch up the wooden sword he'd run all over Thor's furniture with earlier. "Defend yourself!" he shouted.

Thor grabbed a second sword, and the new placement of the furniture made a familiar battle fresh. Eventually the brothers collapsed on the dark brown leather sofa, and Thor pulled open the drapes so they could look out to the brilliance of the cosmos as they talked. They continued late into the night, both drifting off to sleep sprawled on the sofa.

* * *

_M & M_

_One thing I wanted to show in this chapter is that at this point Loki's not _too_ bothered by all this stuff (it builds over time), and, related, that while some of those "slights" are very real, some others are in fact "imagined," e.g., Loki assumes his father was criticizing him in that overheard conversation, but he wasn't._

_Jacqueline & any others - yes, sorry, Loki's poem is forever sealed away in his notebook. My honest confession is I am completely and utterly incapable of writing poetry._

_I'm on the last scene of this story now (but it's a long one), and there's still a bit more that's already written and not up. But we're nearing the end. I estimate 15 chapters total, but I could be off some, there are no chapter breaks in the notebooks where I write this._

_I added a picture for the story. It occurred to me after adding one to my other story actually. It's from Wikipedia, so supposedly okay to use. Took it from the "mead" article there. It doesn't look quite like what I had in mind in the story, but...close enough, at least it's mead!  
_

___Thanks for reading, double-thanks for reviewing, I'm always so interested to hear what you think, and I always love talking about these characters._


	13. Waking & Wondering

**Magic & Mead**

**Chapter Thirteen: Waking & Wondering**

Thor woke at some point with a crick in his neck from the awkward position he'd fallen asleep in. The study had grown chilly; he stood and went into his bedchambers, where he retrieved a couple of blankets. He draped one over Loki and wrapped the other around himself. He stood there looking down at Loki sleeping peacefully, his dark hair falling unruly over the side of his face and the cushion his head rested on.

Thor had always known his little brother was something precious; he'd been admonished all his life to "be careful with Loki" and to "take care of Loki" and to "look after Loki." Thor was only ten months older and hadn't been able to do much "looking after" for a while, but he suspected a lot of that came from his parents' fear that Thor would play too rough with the smaller child and accidentally hurt him. Loki wasn't so delicate, really, but he did get sick more often and he got those muscle pains sometimes and in some strange way seemed a little more fragile in general, though Thor knew better than to ever say anything like that – he didn't want a bloody nose. When he was sleeping, though…when he was sleeping Loki looked like porcelain that breathed and was frighteningly easily broken.

Because they were so close in age, Thor couldn't remember his little brother ever _not_ being there. When they were younger they could hardly stand to be separated from each other at all. They'd shared a crib, then a bed in their own room within their parents' chambers, and when Thor turned ten and was given his own chambers on the floor below, Loki had cried and been unable to sleep and Thor had failed miserably at pretending he was happy about the change, which was soon undone. Thor was thirteen and Loki twelve by the time they consistently slept in their own separate chambers instead of frequently winding up both in one room or the other.

They'd spent their days together, too, and the start of Thor's formal lessons at age five had gone horribly. Thor's loneliness expressed itself in a terrible stomachache and a worse temper, and each day their mother walked down to meet him at the classroom door for lunch break, Loki in hand, and Loki launched himself into Thor's arms. After four days of that, Thor had simply left early on his own and taken Loki with him. Mother had been a little upset because she'd worried, but not _that_ upset, because she'd found Loki in the very first place she looked. After that, no one questioned that Loki would go with Thor to his lessons, and Loki had sat quietly beside him the whole time, sometimes drawing with colored pens, sometimes listening, sometimes trying to copy what Thor wrote. When Loki started his own formal lessons, very little changed – he'd already learned reading and writing and other basic skills. The only thing that really changed was that Loki had to actually participate in the lessons and therefore couldn't draw whenever he felt like it, which proved a difficult habit to break and got him in a fair amount of trouble at first.

Throughout all those years, when people often referred to the brothers as twins although they looked very dissimilar, Thor was always conscious that he was the older brother. Loki was the little brother, Thor the big brother, even when Loki grew taller than him at around age eleven. He had grown up with so much "be careful with Loki" that he'd gotten the idea, for a time, that his little brother truly was breakable. When Loki started trying to walk, Thor, barely two, decided this was a bad thing and would tell him "no" and try to pick Loki up and carry him. He didn't remember much of this – he'd simply heard it enough in those embarrassing family stories – but he vividly remembered making Loki bawl and scream and kick his legs when Thor stopped him from trying to go up the stairs.

Somewhere along the way, things had changed. They'd realized they weren't twins, and Thor had realized that "look after Loki" didn't mean he actually needed to keep him in sight constantly. They didn't have to spend _every_ minute together. There could be other friends. There could even be girls. But they would always be best friends and they would always be brothers – Thor the big brother and Loki the little brother. And Thor had failed as a big brother.

All he'd wanted to do was play a little trick on Loki. It seemed only fair; Loki was always playing tricks, mostly on _him_. But nobody got hurt from Loki's tricks. _Not permanently, anyway_, he thought, recalling a few of the things he'd let Loki try out on him. He'd nearly killed Loki with his mead trick, because for once he'd actually been able to successfully tell a lie. Because Loki trusted his big brother. He would _destroy_ anyone who tried to hurt Loki. So what in the Nine Realms had made him think it would be funny to make his little brother get drunk? Thor had gotten sick from the tankard he'd drunk with Fandral one night. He didn't know the answer. But he knew it would never happen again.

Thor looked down at his sleeping brother, knees pulled up toward his chin, exactly as he'd been before Thor had spread the blanket over him. He felt his heart swelling with affection for this little brother and best friend, and put his cheek in front of Loki's mouth as he'd seen his mother do. Soft, steady puffs of warm air brushed his cheek. Thor drew in a shaky breath. He would really rather go sleep in his own bed, but there was something reassuring, something comforting about remaining close to Loki, as if he _could_ somehow make up for abandoning him two nights ago. He ruffled Loki's hair, then curled up on the other end of the sofa and watched him sleep until his own eyes drifted closed again.

_M & M_

* * *

_M & M_

Thor woke to his mother's hand on his cheek.

"Good morning," she whispered.

He groaned, rotated his neck, stretched his arms above his head, and his mother sat back on her heels in front of the sofa where he'd slept. Where Loki had slept, too. His eyes darted back and forth between Loki – who was still asleep – and his mother.

"He's fine, Mother. I made sure he stayed warm. And I checked his breathing, just in case," Thor whispered, prepared to get in trouble for letting Loki spend the night on a sofa in his study instead of Loki's own bed. Thor's whisper wasn't as quiet as Frigga's though, and Loki began to stir.

"I know," she said, smiling. "I was worried, though, when Loki wasn't in his chambers. I do wish you boys would tell someone when you do something like that." The two Einherjar on the boys' floor could have reported Loki's whereabouts, but even before the boys had turned ten they'd started trying to evade the guards who kept watch over them, so an understanding was reached among them all that Thor and Loki would not hide from the Einherjar, the Einherjar would do their jobs but keep their confidence and give them their privacy, and Frigga and Odin would respect that privacy and not use the Einherjar as informers on every move the boys made. It was a difficult change for Frigga at first, but ultimately it was her sons' safety she was concerned about, and she felt this was the best way to ensure that Thor and Loki accepted the guards' presence as they grew older, and should her adventuresome boys really find themselves in danger they would not be alone and additional help could be summoned.

They had flaunted that agreement not so long ago when they'd hid not only from their guards but also from Asgard's guardian – in a rather stunning demonstration of a leap in Loki's flair for magic – and traveled to Svartalfheim in secret. The Einherjar who had their watch were from the most elite unit of warrior guards, and were hardly fooled by a couple of youths. They had done exactly as Frigga would have wanted, following the boys in stealth for their protection, then reporting the incident immediately upon their safe return. She and Odin argued into the wee hours of the morning afterward; she in a panic and he proud of their bravery and temerity, which turned her panic into a rage. In the end she'd allowed herself to be convinced that saying nothing – and posting an additional stealth Einherjar at the entrance to the cave with the secret portal – was the wisest course of action. At least this way the boys would _think_ they were successfully slipping past their guards but would never actually be without their protection. If they knew they'd been caught, she feared they'd only improve their skills at eluding them.

After their rule-breaking journey to Svartalfheim Thor had claimed to be sick, through Loki who did all the talking in lies Frigga might have believed had she not known the truth. And that was difficult to swallow as well, because she couldn't say anything about it. Still, in their behavior they were as transparent as the wind, as Loki insisted he needed to stay by Thor's side for days and was nervous and lacked an appetite for days more.

Thor was looking glum now; Frigga gave him a tired smile and ran a hand down his long blond locks. It would be time for the Barber Battle again soon. "That was Loki's responsibility in this case, not yours. Besides, when I can't find one of you, I simply look for the other one and usually find the one I'm missing." She gave him a wink, then leaned forward and kissed his forehead. Frigga stood and took a few steps to her right, toward Loki, who was rubbing his eyes and sitting up, his blanket falling to his lap.

"Someone's been redecorating, I see," she said after kissing his forehead. She knew her boys and she easily recognized Loki's handiwork in the odd new layout of Thor's furniture.

His head twisted around to take in the room with a raised eyebrow, then looked back at her with that sweet-but-not-entirely-innocent smile that never failed to lessen her resolve to be stern with her younger son.

She sighed. "If Thor wants you to put it back, you put it back. No arguing. All right?"

"All right," Loki said, sneaking a quick look at Thor, who stuck his tongue out. Loki gave a huff and leaned back into the sofa. If he stuck _his_ tongue out in return, he'd be seen.

"I shudder to think how late you boys must have stayed up last night," Frigga said, stepping back a bit so she could see both sons. "You're running late now. Your breakfasts are getting cold and your tutor is waiting for you."

Eager not to add to his punishment, Thor nodded, threw off his blanket, and shot up to his feet.

"One more thing," Frigga said, bringing Thor to a halt, while Loki hugged a cushion to his chest, less eager to get up and put his feet on the cold stone floor. "Your lessons have been shortened today and your training has been cancelled."

"But Mother-" both boys said, more or less in unison, Thor unwilling to give up his sole outdoors time and Loki unwilling to delay working out a strength training plan with their instructors.

"Come up to our dining room for lunch, and then you'll spend the afternoon with your father and me."

Both boys reacted to this with excitement, Thor asking over Loki's voice if they could take a trip together somewhere. "A hunt would be fun," he added.

Frigga groaned. "No hunting. I'm too tired for that. Besides, it wouldn't be any fun at all since you wouldn't be allowed to join us."

Thor sighed and nodded. With Frigga turned away from him Loki thought about sticking out his tongue, but Thor looked so crestfallen he couldn't bring himself to do it.

"All right. Up-up-up," she said, clapping her hands together in time with the words. Loki scrambled to his feet, grimacing and hopping from foot to foot, while Thor hurried into his bedchambers to get dressed. Loki plopped back down on the sofa and wrapped the blanket around himself.

"It's too cold," he complained.

"And whose fault is that? There _used_ to be a nice warm rug in front of this sofa."

Loki sat up taller and looked over the back of the sofa to the brown and white goatskin marking its former location. _That smile _was back when he turned back around.

"Well, if you're really too cold, I could carry you," Frigga said, half-teasing. If Loki said yes she'd actually have to back out of the not-terribly-serious offer – her back was aching and Loki was, after all, fourteen.

Loki was tempted to say yes. He was still sleepy and his mother's arms were better than any blanket. But Thor would never let him hear the end of it, and he was, after all, fourteen. He got back up with a pout, found his boots, and tugged them on.

"You better hurry, Loki," Thor said when Loki and Frigga went through the bedchambers where Thor was already dressing. "I'm not going to wait for you."

Loki ignored him. It wasn't true anyway. Thor always waited for Loki, and Loki always waited for Thor.

"Do we still have our poetry lesson today?" Loki asked as they walked through the corridor toward Loki's chambers, Frigga's arms loosely over his shoulders.

"You still have everything, just in shorter blocks. Did you finish reworking your poem?"

Loki nodded and stared hard at the floor, hoping she wouldn't ask if Thor had helped.

They came to a stop outside his door. "Mother…"

"Yes, Loki," she said, smiling at his hesitation, and at the thoughts so clearly whirling around in his mind.

"You don't have to punish Thor for so long. I know he didn't mean for anything bad to happen."

Frigga pulled him into a hug. "I know that. And I'm glad _you_ know it. I'm glad you aren't angry with him. But he did make a serious mistake, and that's all I'm going to say about it to you. It's between Thor and me. You and I, however, still have to talk about your own actions. This afternoon, all right?"

Loki nodded and pulled away from his mother, dejected. He'd tried to help Thor out and all he'd gotten for it was a reminder of his own trouble. He'd hoped that she considered that taken care of through his apology to his father and earning his father's forgiveness. Apparently now they had a whole afternoon to spend going over all his and Thor's bad decisions. Thor was right, hunting would have been better.

"Go on, you'll be keeping your brother waiting now, too."

Loki nodded again, then remembered to add a more polite "Yes, Mother," and went into his chambers where a breakfast tray with foods gone cold had been left. He didn't really have time for it anyway so he almost skipped it, but changed his mind when he realized that he probably wouldn't be able to eat much at lunch. Remaining on his feet he ate as much as he could bear – he strongly disliked eating cold foods that were supposed to be hot – then rushed about getting ready to meet Thor at the stairs.

* * *

_M & M_

_"Today" is the last day of this story. There's one more "thing" left to happen (if you have a really good memory for details and are reading _Beneath_ you might guess what it is), and several loose ends to tie up amidst some family togetherness moments with strokes of foreshadowing. It'll be probably two chapters total left, but not sure, only part of it is written as of today, 1/17/13. Any guesses as to the loose ends? Any questions yourself? I think I've got them all covered in the plans for the rest of the story, but if you think of one I've forgotten you'll certainly have my thanks! There is *one* loose end I'm deliberately not going to tie, basically it's beyond the scope of this story the way the final scenes are set up. And there are a few things raised in this chapter that will not be further delved into in this story, but maybe in another one at some point. Anything you'd like to see expanded on? I'm open to ideas for inclusion in another story I have in mind that would cover large swaths of their childhood/youth years (can't guarantee I'd use 'em but maybe!)._

_One guest reviewer response: jacqueline, my intent with Loki's reaction to what Thor did, was that he was angry not over the intent of what Thor did, but the result. But it worked out okay in the end, so everything's cool now...sort of. Loki never did actually forgive him, at least not overtly. This will be very briefly addressed again, but from a different angle. Throw in a millennium of feeling second-best and a well-timed revelation about his genetics, however, and there's a lot of revisionist history going on in his head. And response to all reviewers, thank you! I really truly enjoy hearing your reactions.  
_

_For some reason I find the image of Thor learning math or whatever while Loki sits there quietly beside him drawing absolutely adorable...  
_

_Thank you for reading, thank you for reviewing!  
_


	14. Agreements & Announcements

_Re ideas for other story (still welcomed BTW): What Jotuns eat, and how they feed themselves has been bugging me for a while now, actually because of _Beneath_. I hadn't thought about seafood, I like this idea... And what effect could it have on a young Loki, hmmm... Weapons training will definitely be in it, and Loki will *not* be a wuss, once he figures out his own strengths and weaknesses. He sees himself as a wuss in a sense because he doesn't measure up to Thor in physical strength...but then no one does! I *love* the learning to catch arrows idea, yes, that *must* be in it! I don't adopt the magic = women's work theme from mythology (which I take as pick and choose on the grounds the Vikings got some of it "wrong" and intermingled native beliefs with what they learned from the Asgardians they encountered at some point), except in maybe a kind of indirect way made necessary by the movie, that magic is less "warrior-like" in battle; although I think it's a great background for storytelling basically it appears in so many other stories I don't want to retread that ground._

_M & M**  
**_

* * *

**Magic & Mead**

**Chapter Fourteen: Agreements & Announcements**

"Why are you in such a rush?" Loki called, hanging back behind Thor, who was racing down a worn path through the grass that paralleled the main thoroughfare to the palace and provided a shortcut to its side entrance.

Thor slowed down and waited for Loki – in no hurry at all – to catch up. "Aren't you excited? There must be some kind of celebration planned."

"I don't think it's going to be a celebration."

"What else would it be?" Thor asked, his pace dropping further to match Loki's. He hoped Loki wasn't about to ruin his good mood.

"I think it's about punishment," Loki answered glumly, coming to a halt.

Thor signed and came to halt as well. "But they've already given us our punishments."

"I think it's about punishment for _me._"

"_Yours_ is already over. Gullveig is gone now."

"That was Father's punishment, and he was in a good mood. Mother said we have to 'talk' this afternoon," he said, holding up a hand and tapping his fingers against his thumb to signal quoted speech.

"Mother isn't mad at you. She's mad at me."

"Mother doesn't actually get _mad_."

Thor shot him a look. "You didn't see her. She gave me six months. She never hands out punishment like that. Trust me, she was mad."

Loki shrugged. "Well, you _did_ almost kill me."

Thor gave Loki a light shove to the shoulder, but he felt self-conscious. He wasn't quite ready to laugh at that. "I just meant I don't think you're going to face more punishment. But if you do, I'll stand up for you."

"No, don't."

"But I want to," Thor insisted.

"It's better if you don't. Besides, I already tried to stand up for _you_, this morning. Mother-"

"You did? Thank you, Brother. I really don't deserve it this time," Thor interrupted.

Loki shook his head. "Don't thank me. It didn't work."

"That's all right. You tried. I still appreciate it."

"You're welcome."

"We should go. I still think maybe it's a celebration."

"All right," Loki said with a laugh. "We'll go with your interpretation. It's a celebration. But it's still an indoors celebration. And you could hardly keep still in there."

Thor nodded. "I had to sit through yet another version of your poem about a bunch of water. The other ones were boring, but _that _one…" Thor rolled his eyes, unable to come up with words to describe it. Nobody could possibly love water _that_ much.

"Ulfid said it was good."

"Ulfid should've seen the one you wrote three nights ago."

Loki stuck out his tongue. It was childish and Mother wouldn't like it, but it felt good and he'd been waiting to do it all day. "Ulfid should've seen how that one got written. Anyway, I guess the mead _sort of_ helped, in a way, in the end. I re-wrote the poem and it was better than before, _after _you almost killed me," he said. He still didn't _really_ believe he'd been that close to death, even though he'd certainly felt like it that morning – but it was a lot of fun to say it to Thor.

"I told you it would help," Thor answered with a smirk and grabbed Loki's arm, trying to tug him forward.

"You can try it for our next poem, then. But three barrels may not be enough for you, since you're older than me." He knew Thor had drunk mead before, a few times with friends, some of whom were a few years older. He also knew he'd never had more than a tankard or so – Thor's stories started big but Loki was good at getting to the truth. Usually.

"Forget it," Thor said, shaking his head so violently it made Loki laugh. "I won't see sixteen if I touch mead again before I'm twenty."

"So you still agree to do anything I ask?" Loki inquired, digging his heels into the earth.

Thor gave up trying to get him to move. He could have kept pulling, but he would have pulled Loki right off his feet. Loki could be exceedingly stubborn, sometimes far outlasting Thor – who could also be stubborn but lacked Loki's patience – in a battle of wills. "I know you'll make me regret this, but yes, I'll do anything you ask. _Now_ can we go? I'm hungry."

"Were you told what route you have to take between lessons and home?" Loki asked, ignoring the question. Thor tended to see the black-and-white; Loki looked for the gray.

"No." He sighed. _What now?!_ "Why?"

"They why don't we take a longer route?"

"Like what? Go through the main entrance?"

"Like through the stables. Or somewhere else."

"Loki, the stables aren't even on the way. We'll get into trouble. And _I_ can't afford it."

"We don't have to stop there, just go through. As long as we keep walking, or even running, we can honestly say we came from our lessons to the palace. It's not for me, Thor, I can go outside any time I want to. Assuming this is a celebration we're going to." It was technically true, but in practice it wouldn't be. If Thor couldn't go out Loki wouldn't taunt him by going out without him; he'd stay in, too, and come up with things they could do indoors to have fun.

Thor thought it over. It seemed reasonable, but Loki was good at making things seem reasonable and he still feared they'd get caught. "If Mother or Father ask-"

"I'll answer. You…straighten the gaiters over your boots."

Thor frowned, but found himself nodding. A little more sun, the sounds and smells of the outdoors…

"Walk or run?" Loki asked.

"I'm hungry. Run!" he shouted, racing off.

Loki took off after his brother.

_M & M_

* * *

_M & M_

"Lunch has already arrived. What took you so long? Did you come directly here?" Frigga asked as soon as Thor and Loki burst into the dining room, red-faced and panting.

Thor busied himself with his gaiters.

"We ran all the way, Mother," Loki said in between gasps for air.

"All right. Your father has been delayed. Thor, wait here, catch your breath. I need to talk to Loki for a few minutes."

"Can I-"

"No. Wait for us. I'm hoping your father will be here soon and we can all eat together. Get something to drink if you want it, though."

Thor eyed the covered trays and the plate of bread, while Loki waited to be taken to his doom.

Frigga led Loki two rooms over to a small library and gestured for him to sit in a large black leather chair – his father's – and Frigga sat not in the slightly smaller matching chair beside it, but on the leather footstool in front of Odin's chair, putting her head at the same height as Loki's.

"I need to talk to you about what happened the other night."

Loki nodded. She still didn't know what really happened that night, so he figured he was best off saying as little as possible. Based on what he'd told her and what he knew Thor had told her, she had no idea that Thor had gotten him drunk on purpose, or that it was connected to her insistence that she ask Thor for help with his poem.

"Loki…you _know_ you broke a rule, don't you? That mead is only to be drunk by adults. _You_, my sweet boy, are not yet an adult, far from it, in fact."

Her voice was stern but calm, yet even this degree of sternness was something he wasn't really used to. Her face was very close to his, and he found himself drawing back and feeling something unpleasant that he couldn't quite put his finger on. He just knew he didn't like it. He nodded again.

"So why would you do it? Why did you drink so much, why would you drink it at all? Have you drunk mead at any other times? Is there…" She faltered and looked away for a moment. When she looked at him again her expression was softer but frighteningly serious. "Did you _want_ to be drunk? I know you've been…worried about some things lately, and…if something were really wrong…you would tell me, wouldn't you? You wouldn't hurt yourself like this?"

She reached for his hands and he pulled away, pushing himself all the way back in the chair, making his legs stick out straight over the seat and preventing her from coming any closer. "No, Mother, no, it wasn't like that," Loki said, physically uncomfortable with the unexpected turn in the conversation. "I was just…I was just curious, that's all."

"But you know if you're curious about something you can come to me. I let you taste mead when you asked about it. You were curious about what it's like to be drunk, then?"

"No. I didn't…" There was simply no way out. There was nothing he could say to defend himself without throwing Thor to the wolves. _Mother, _Thor_ was curious about what it would be like for me to be drunk!_ Thinking like that only made him angry at Thor again, which made it harder not to say it out loud. But Thor might not see the sun or even food and water for years if he said that.

"I need answers, Loki. Thor told me it was his idea, but he didn't hold your mouth open and force you to drink it. I want to know why you drank the first glass, and I want to know why you drank the last glass."

Loki thought hard. He pressed his lips together and squinted his eyes to see if he could make himself cry. She always forgot whatever it was she was worried about when he started crying. But it didn't work; all he got for his effort was a few shaky breaths. "The first glass…I don't know. I guess I thought I was old enough. Some of the boys drink it before they're twenty," he said, wincing a little as he realized she'd probably realize he meant Thor. "Some of the girls, too," he added to deflect her from that conclusion.

Frigga saw right through it; Thor had already confessed, anyway. "Yes, some of them do. And I can tell that you know your brother is one of those. He's sworn to me he won't do it again, and your father told me you swore the same to him. You boys…you take too many risks. Your bodies are going to become nearly impervious to real damage, but right now you're still vulnerable. You forget that. Like all boys and girls your age, I suppose. Drinking mead at your age, Loki…it's not a sign of maturity, it's just the opposite. Do you understand that now, after everything that happened?"

"Yes, Mother," he said, fidgeting. _Yes, I know it's not a sign of maturity, it's a sign of Thor's _stupidity!

"So you were trying to grow up too fast. Why did you drink the second, and the third glass? Why the last glass?"

Loki was by now fidgeting to the point of squirming on the chair. He wanted nothing more than escape. But she wouldn't relent. She wouldn't let it go. _Because Thor told me nobody ever recites a saga without at least two tankards! And he was right, so I drained the glass!_

"I'm waiting for an answer."

"I don't know. I…it…every glass was easier. I don't even remember the last glass."

"Tell me the truth, Loki, were you trying to hurt yourself?"

"No! No, Mother, I promise. I swear. I didn't know what would happen."

"I heard about you and Ranka. Are you all right? Because you can talk to me about it."

"No! I mean, yes, I'm all right. We just had a fight, and I don't like her anymore." And now it was _really_ uncomfortable, and Loki felt his muscles tensing. He knew she didn't know about that incident with Ranka – if she did she wouldn't be asking if _he_ were all right – but he was already so on edge now he was afraid he might blurt out something awful.

"And there's nothing else you need to talk to me about?"

"No, Mother," he said, shaking his head hard. He could feel tears building in his eyes, and that was just fantastic, because he wasn't _trying_ to cry now. "I just did something stupid, and Thor did something stupid, and I didn't know what I was doing, and I didn't know what would happen, and I'm so sorry I scared you, and I'm so sorry I almost died, and I swear I won't do it ever again." A tear made it down his right cheek and he swiped at it with the back of his hand, then folded in on himself in the chair.

Frigga leaned in and reached for him, pulling him gently into her arms, where he shook with little dry sobs, holding back the deluge of tears that threatened. Frigga suspected she wasn't getting the entire truth, but both Loki's distress and his regret were clearly genuine. Pushing him further wouldn't get her anywhere; it would only upset him more.

"Please, Mother, please don't ask me any more about it. I'm so sorry," he said, the words muffled against her sleeve.

"All right, Loki. And of course you're forgiven. You made a bad decision, and it won't be your last. We all make bad decisions sometimes. I just want to be certain that if you're ever concerned about something, or unhappy, or angry, or afraid, that you'll come and talk to me, and not make hasty decisions you might regret. Understand?"

He nodded, his head still pressed into her arm.

"Good. Let me look at you now," she said, pulling back a little.

Loki sat back on the chair and wiped at his nose, his gaze fixed downward.

"Hmmm. That won't do. Stay still." She ran a thumb in lines across his face, starting with his forehead and working her way to his chin, clearing the splotchy redness as well as his sinuses with a minor tingle of magic. "Better?"

He nodded and gave a small smile.

"Good. Because a little celebration is in order and we can't have you looking sad for it."

Loki's chin dropped and his eyes went wide. "Thor was _right_?"

"If he thought we were celebrating, then yes, he was."

When Frigga and Loki emerged back in the dining room, Odin had already arrived. He was standing in the open area that served as the wide throughway from one room to the next – this room was not closed off by doors – and Thor was leaning into him, pressing his palms hard against his chest. Loki recognized this game; they'd played it often as children, when Odin had let them win. They hadn't played it for a long time now, years maybe, and it didn't look like he was letting Thor win.

"Try harder. Plant your feet, use your shoulders, and push forward."

Thor adjusted his position and pressed hard with his shoulders; Odin's middle gave ever so slightly, but he still didn't budge.

"Play time is over, boys. Come sit down."

Odin suddenly leaned forward and grabbed Thor at the waist, easily lifting him and turning him to face the dining room table before setting him down again. Thor laughed and Loki wondered if Odin had been letting him win in a way after all, allowing him that tiny bit of progress.

Thor shot Loki a questioning look as they walked over to the table, but Loki was still feeling a little raw, and he blamed it on Thor. He ignored the look and took his place at the table across from his brother. Thor sighed, guessing Loki was mad at him again and knowing there wasn't much he could do about it at the moment. He hoped Loki was wrong and hadn't wound up in more trouble for something that wasn't his fault. He hoped Loki hadn't changed his mind and explained exactly _why_ it wasn't his fault.

Loki watched Thor's mood change rapidly from jovial to gloomy and felt sorry for him. _He didn't mean it_, he reminded himself. A servant stepped forward from the wall to uncover the trays and pour drinks – apple juice and water for everyone except Odin, who took red wine – and meanwhile the next time Thor glanced Loki's way he widened his eyes to get Thor's attention. _"You were right,"_ he mouthed.

Thor's eyebrows went up. _"Really?"_

Loki nodded.

"So," Odin began, pausing for a long while to take a bite of braised lamb in a mildly seasoned tomato sauce – a much more formal meal than they usually had for lunch. "Your mother and I had a plan. And that plan was spoiled by two boys whom I shall not name."

"Odin…"

"Don't make assumptions, Frigga. There are many boys in Asgard besides these at our table. And these I fear have seen enough trouble recently. Too much, in fact."

Loki and Thor glanced back and forth between their parents. Their father was in a very good mood to be jesting like this.

"Yes, too much," Frigga said with a sigh. "Thor, your father and I agreed, since we know how much you regret what happened with Loki, and we believe you won't do such a thing again, we're reducing your punishment to three months, with the same conditions, and the same expectation that you'll behave more responsibly in the future."

"I…I will," Thor said in surprise. "Thank you." Three months still seemed like an eternity, but at least it was half the eternity of his original punishment.

Loki frowned. _Three months for almost killing me?_ That didn't seem quite right to him, even though it was him who'd tried to argue for Thor's punishment to be reduced in the first place. Thor would be happy, at least.

"Loki has similarly agreed to try to make wiser decisions in the future, so we'll discuss this no further. Agreed?"

"Agreed," both boys said in unison, each relieved for his own reasons.

"Agreed," Odin added. "Now, back to the plan these nameless boys spoiled. Your mother and I had intended to make an announcement at the feast in honor of Gullveig's visit, and to talk about it with you beforehand. Given the circumstances that we will not be discussing further, we decided to postpone it. Frigg?"

Her face went very soft, her smile one of those her sons associated with some kind of gushy romanticism and maybe a few tears. Neither had a clue what she might be about to say, but both feared it was something that was going to make them very uncomfortable.

"Thor, Loki," she began, looking at each boy in turn, "your father and I are very happy to share our news with you. We're going to have a baby."

* * *

_M & M_


	15. Suspicions & Swords

_Okay, so this chapter's a bit long compared to the rest in _M&M_, but not long enough to warrant splitting what is really one scene I think. So...that means this is it! Wow, I get to figure out how to mark it as complete, exciting. You don't know how exciting._

_I may as well be more up-front at this point, this story was specifically written to enable me to explore (initially for my own purposes, to support my main story, _Beneath_), "where did it all begin to go wrong?" and the family dynamic that underpins this. And I didn't think it should be something explosive (because while that's very movie-like it's usually not very actual-life-like). And even here, of course, is not literally where the very first tiny thing goes wrong, and it's still not anything _inevitably_ going wrong. But it's the first time Loki doubts things he's never doubted before. The first tiny cracks in the family, you might say. The first time Loki really feels that he is somehow different from Thor, not just in superficial ways like their hair color. There are many, many little, mostly very subtle statements I've gone for (maybe too subtle, to the story's detriment, but that's really the way I wanted to try to do it, so...ah well), and it's excited me each time you've let me know in a review that you caught one of them. And of course there's tons of foreshadowing, for the movies as well as for Beneath and the other stories I have tumbling around in my head._

_I heard more stories-to-come ideas from jacquelinelittle and Mr. God of Mischief himself (I'm probably in trouble if I ignore those!), and there are real gems there! Thanks! If I use any of them...and assuming these stories get written it's pretty much a given I will...I will be sure to publicly thank you for your input._

_And without further delay (I am as hesitant to click off on this as I was with the first chapter of _Beneath_ I put up!), here's the final chapter of _Magic & Mead_, "Suspicions & Swords" (I also can't believe I actually managed to keep up the "A&A" "B&B" thing). Thanks for reading, thanks for reviewing!_

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**Magic & Mead**

**Chapter Fifteen: Suspicions & Swords**

Loki stared at Frigga; Thor glanced back and forth between Frigga and Odin.

Thor spoke first, wrinkling his brow and asking a stunned "What?"

"You heard correctly, we're having a baby. You're going to have a little brother or sister in about eight months. I know it's quite a surprise. That's why we wanted to be able to talk it over with you before anyone else knows."

"I don't suppose we have any say in it," Thor said with a frown.

Odin laughed as Frigga answered with a teasing smile. "You're old enough to know it's a little late for that. We're very happy about it, Thor, and I hope you will be, too. Both of you."

"You both need to congratulate your mother, boys. And you'll need to be well-behaved for her, and assist her with anything she asks of you."

"Congratulations, Mother," both boys said, Thor chiming in just a second after Loki, and both also assured her they would help with whatever she needed.

Odin began to explain their new plans to announce the pregnancy at another feast in a few weeks, and how Thor had best not tell anyone before then so King Gullveig would not think this news had been withheld from him. Loki was barely listening. He kept glancing back at his mother, who sometimes looked his way as well and smiled warmly at him. _Why does she need a baby? She already has two of us, why does she need a third? Aren't we enough? Aren't _I_ enough? She won't call me all those names she calls me anymore. I shouldn't have told her to stop calling me her baby._

These thoughts continued and built up inside him, and soon Loki's chest was rising and falling rapidly and he looked to be on the verge of tears. Frigga said his name, then repeated it before he noticed and turned her way.

"This will be a big new responsibility for you. You'll be someone's big brother. Do you think you can handle it?" she asked gently.

Loki nodded automatically, and then began to consider that. He had always been the little brother, and it never occurred to him that he could be anything else. He looked over at Thor. Thor was a pretty good big brother, _most_ of the time. He could do that, look out for someone younger, play games, give advice.

"It's not all that great of a job, Loki, don't get too excited," Thor said, seeing his brother's opinion on the matter change before his eyes and thinking of recent events.

Loki started thinking of recent events, too, and thought, _I can do better. I would take care of my younger brother, and I would definitely not trick him into getting drunk because I needed a laugh._ He thought the last so hard, eyes squinted and bored into Thor's, that he hoped _his_ big brother could somehow hear them.

Conversation drifted from babies to the meal they were eating to King Gullveig and his entourage, but Loki said little, immersed in his own thoughts about what it would be like to have a little brother around. The Aesir were long-lived but usually had few children; babies were not born every day, and the birth of a child was a much-celebrated event. Loki had only seen a few babies in his life.

Thor had been distracted by the conversation to a greater extent, but he too had not stopped thinking about the announcement, and suddenly in a lull he declared, "I hope you have a girl, Mother."

Loki wrinkled his nose in confusion and a bit of distaste. "Why?" He wasn't feeling particularly disposed toward girls at the moment, in the aftermath of what had happened with Ranka. It hadn't really even occurred to him that he could have a _sister_.

"Because I already _have_ a brother. I don't see any need for another one," he declared confidently.

Loki broke into a grin; Thor had a point there. "Me either. You're right. We want a girl, Mother."

"Duly noted, but unfortunately you don't have a say in that, either," Frigga said.

"A little girl would be lovely, but she would have to grow very strong to survive these two for brothers. _I_ had two brothers, and the three of us went on many a grand adventure together," Odin said.

"Loki and I already go on grand adventures. We don't need another brother for that."

Loki slid down in his chair a little, stretched out his leg, and kicked at Thor's feet. He wasn't supposed to advertise their "grand adventures," some of which had been made in secret.

Thor jerked his head toward Loki and glared at him. He knew better than to mention Svartalfheim. It wasn't like they hadn't done anything else or been anywhere else. Sometimes Loki really treated him like he was stupid, and sometimes that got old.

"So you would prefer to bring a sister with you on your adventures?" Frigga asked.

"No!" Loki declared immediately. He didn't really want _anyone_ tagging along with them. He remembered Birna, the girl who'd first caught Thor's eye, and how she'd wound up driving Loki out of their new threesome and replacing him. And he didn't like it when Hogun or Fandral joined them, either.

"It would be all right. Sometimes, anyway. Not all the time. We could show her how to be a warrior," Thor said, picturing some little long-haired girl, blond like him or raven-headed like Loki, trying to hold a sword while he taught her how to use it. He thought it might be fun, and at the very least good for a few laughs.

"Girls aren't warriors," Loki asserted.

"Perhaps they could be, if they wanted to. And you two will make superb teachers, for a girl _or_ a boy," Frigga said.

Loki fell into his own thoughts again. He could teach a little brother everything. Everything he _had_ learned, everything he _would_ learn. Everything Eir had just taught him. And he would make sure his brother never felt bad about being younger or smaller.

"None for me," Odin said when their lunch plates were removed and a strawberry tort offered.

"Me, either," Thor chimed in. "Can we have a swordfight?"

Odin chuckled. "If your mother approves."

"Go ahead. Just be careful."

"I will."

"I was talking to your father."

"I defeated the Frost Giants just fourteen years ago. I think I can handle this youth."

"You know what I mean."

Loki listened to the exchange, while biting into his tort – it was delicious and Thor really shouldn't have skipped it – then angled his head off to the right, to watch his father and brother, even as he felt the weight of his mother's gaze on him from his left. Every room in these chambers held a ceremonial sword, each special in some way, many of them gifts from other realms. Thor drew the one mounted on the wall in this room – Vanaheim had provided it on the occasion of Thor's birth – while Odin retrieved one from the next.

He didn't understand Thor sometimes – he was acting like he'd never heard their mother say she was going to have a baby, like it wasn't some monumental event that would deeply affect them both. Loki was still trying to convince himself it was real; right now it still felt more like something he'd just dreamt up in his imagination.

"Look at this, Father!" Thor said, hefting the sword in his right hand and flexing his muscles. "Look how strong I've gotten. Remember when I could barely lift one of these?"

Odin placed his left hand around Thor's arm to feel the muscle. "I see. You must have been training hard. But when were ever unable to lift a sword? I think you emerged from your mother's womb grasping for one and lifted it toward the ceiling as soon as one was given to you."

"Ewwww. Don't talk about that."

"How is your speed?" Odin asked, his hand darting forward to tap Thor's chin with his fingertips before he could pull back. "I see how strong you've grown, but you still have things to work on. Swordfighting isn't just about strength. You need speed, reflexes, anticipation. You must think about your opponent, and _his_ strengths and weaknesses.

Thor batted for Odin's chin but Odin easily avoided him. And the game began, the swords soon replacing hands.

"He's right, you know. Like I said, there are other forms of strength."

Loki glanced toward his mother, but he felt uncomfortable with her now, whether from their earlier conversation or the unexpected news, he didn't know. He wasn't really worried about strength anymore, anyway. He was going to train harder than he ever had, harder than Thor ever had, now that he knew what to do. He popped a whole strawberry in his mouth and thought about Eir, about how perhaps he should apologize for being rude to her.

"Milk, please," Loki said, and one of the servants brought over a pitcher and filled a glass for him. He washed down the last of the tort, wiped his mouth with his napkin, placed it over his plate, and sagged back in chair, tired and pleasantly full.

Frigga stood up and walked over behind him, grasping his left hand. "Come over here and keep me company," she said. "I find swordfighting dull."

Feeling a bit of reluctance, Loki got up and let her lead him over to the heavy wooden bench against the back wall, opposite the throughway where his father and brother dueled. "Do you really find it dull?" he asked as they settled there, his mother's arm wrapped around his shoulder. The two servants meanwhile descended on the table and Loki continued to watch what he could of the swordfight, in glimpses through the servants scurrying between the table and the serving carts and buffet console. "You said you studied it, right?" He liked training on the sword, but he knew Thor liked it much more; Loki preferred playfighting, growing bored when the training dragged on and was all rote, memorized moves.

"I did. I studied every weapon I could before I married your father. I wanted to have a better understanding of who he was and what his interests were. I hope those days of war are now behind us."

"Because Father defeated the Frost Giants?"

"Yes. And because he defeated others or else convinced them to end their aggression. All the Nine Realms are now at peace with each other. That state of affairs has been all too rare."

There was always something strange in it, when his mother spoke about war. Loki had only ever known peace, but lived with constant reminders of war. His own birthday coincided with the annual festivities marking the victory over the Frost Giants. Yet despite what his father and others who'd fought in that war said, it was hard for him to imagine that Frost Giants actually even existed anymore; he'd certainly never seen one. They seemed more like mythical creatures made up to scare children into being good, or just to torment them for no particular reason at all.

"Did you ask your father why the Frost Giants started the Ice War?" Frigga asked a few minutes later.

Loki shook his head. "I haven't had the chance."

"Perhaps once _this_ war is over," she said, cringing as Odin's blade stopped just in time and left a flap of cloth hanging from Thor's shoulder. "_You_ don't have to see that his clothing is repaired, Odin," she said in a loud admonishing tone. "_That was far too close. You must be more careful_," she was really saying.

Odin heard both messages and nodded, and no more need for mending appeared.

"You and Father could help us with our new assignment," Loki said eagerly when the idea came to him.

"I'm sure we would be glad to. What is it?"

"We-"

"Thor!" Frigga shouted. He'd just spun around and sent her heavy red drapes tumbling to the floor – or a quarter of one panel anyway.

"Sorry, Mother!"

"Out, both of you! Go into the corridor, and have the guards remove the statues and vases. And don't forget that glass sculpture from Alfheim."

"Yes, Frigg," Odin said in unison with Thor's "Yes, Mother."

The two disappeared into the next room and Loki watched as his mother leaned back again, after leaning forward to scold Father and Thor. His eyes fell on her stomach. It looked the same as always. He hadn't been around many pregnant women, but he knew more or less how the whole thing worked, and he knew she would soon look like she was about to erupt. "Does it hurt?"

"What? Oh, the baby? No, Loki, it doesn't hurt. I feel tired sometimes, and a little nauseous sometimes. And I can hardly stand to brush my teeth," she added with a laugh. If there was one symptom she could get rid of, it would be that one.

"Why? What do your teeth have to do with it?" Loki said, looking up at her with wrinkled brow.

"I really don't know. But I feel sick every time the toothbrush touches the back of my mouth. It happened with Thor, too." It had lasted the whole of her pregnancy; she hoped she would fare better this time.

"Not me?"

Frigga stiffened for an instant; such a slip was extremely rare for her. She realized she would have to be much more careful about such things now that there would be more talk of pregnancy and babies. "No, my darling boy, you never made me sick at all," she said, gently squeezing Loki's shoulder.

Loki stretched, then let himself lean into his mother. He liked that idea, that Thor had made her sick but he hadn't. He sighed deeply and his neck angled downward, his gaze again falling on her stomach. "Mother, don't tell Thor I said so, but…"

"What?" she prompted.

"You won't tell Thor?"

"Not if you don't want me to, unless it's something I think he needs to know for his own safety."

"It's nothing like that. It's just…I know Thor wants a girl, but I hope you have a boy."

A smile spread across Frigga's face. "Really?"

Loki nodded into her chest, just below her collarbone. "I think it could be nice to have a little brother. I can take care of him and protect him and teach him everything he needs to know. And he'll listen to me and look up to me."

"Like you look up to Thor."

Loki scowled for a moment, but then stretched his neck up awkwardly to grin at his mother. He didn't necessarily always like to admit it, but he _did_ look up to Thor, and he _did_ think it would be nice to have someone look up to him for a change. "How big will he be when he's born?" Loki suddenly asked. He realized he was picturing a child, not the screaming baby his little brother would start out as.

Frigga took her hand from Loki's shoulder and held both out in front of them. "Mmmm, about like this."

His eyes widened. "Was I that small?"

"You were. Thor, too. You were a little taller."

Loki nodded. He hoped it would stay that way. "Did Thor like having a little brother, when I was born?"

Frigga thought back. In the very beginning, that first night, Thor hadn't liked him much at all. But Loki didn't need to know that part. "He didn't know quite what to make of you at first, but by the second day he was fascinated with you and by the fourth day he cried if we separated you from him. He liked you very much. But he made it very difficult to feed and change either of you."

"Thor _always_ likes to make things difficult."

"You do have your moments, too, Loki," she said with a laugh.

"Do not," he said with a pout followed by another of those grins that melted her heart.

Frigga laughed again and draped an arm over Loki's chest, tickling his side and making him squirm against her. She stopped and let him catch his breath. "Your little brother, or sister, is going to be very lucky to have you for a big brother."

"Oh!" Loki exclaimed, suddenly pushing himself upright and off of his mother.

Frigga bit back a grimace; he'd pressed right into her stomach without thinking about it.

"When he's born, I'll be fifteen. And that means when he starts his lessons, I'll be twenty. I'll be done with lessons, so I can take him to his, and he won't have to go alone like Thor did before he started taking me with him."

"I'm sure he would like that," she answered, falling into Loki's pattern of referring to the baby as "he."

"I can't even imagine what it'll be like to be twenty," he said, his eyes growing unfocused as he tried to picture it. Tried to picture himself taller, stronger, with a gleaming helmet and all of that extra armor, spending his days in the training arena instead of the classroom, but able to take a day off if he wanted to, to take his little brother to his lessons and stay with him, on the first day at least, and then for as long as his brother needed him to. It was hard to envision; his imagined self looked rather silly. It was much easier if he pictured himself the same as he was now, and then he could easily picture a younger version of himself holding his hand as the two walked down the palace stairs through its corridors and out toward the same classroom that he and Thor now used.

"I can hardly remember what it was like to be twenty," Frigga said wistfully a moment later.

Loki's face drifted into a frown. Twenty seemed a lifetime away; he _truly_ couldn't imagine what it was like to be as old as his mother. But he'd said something like that once and quickly learned not to do so again. He sighed and leaned back on the bench. As much as he longed for adulthood, sometimes he wished everything would stay exactly the same as it was now. A baby meant it could not. "Everything will be different, won't it? Everything will change."

"Not everything. There will simply be one more person to love. And a lot of diapers to change."

Loki wrinkled his nose, preferring to think of his little brother after that part was over and he could walk around and Loki could plan little games to play with him. _One more person to love_. "But it won't be like it is now. Like _this_. You won't…you'll be busy with the baby."

"Oh, Loki," Frigga said, hugging him once more with her right arm, then turning them both so she could look him in the eye. She hadn't been sure what to expect from Thor, and she would have to ask him about it later, but this was exactly the reaction she'd expected from Loki, and she was glad Thor and Odin were out spending time together, giving her this moment to speak with Loki alone. At a slight flick of her wrist even the servants left. "Do you think that you have half of my love and Thor has half? Love doesn't work in fractions. It doesn't get divided. You have _all_ of my love. And Thor has _all_ of my love. And this baby already has all of my love, too. Time is a little more difficult. The baby will need a lot of my time. Just as you did when you were a baby. Just as Thor did. But if you help me with the baby, and if we find things we can all do as a family, then we'll still have plenty of time together." She cupped his chin in her right hand. "And I will always, _always_, make time for _this_."

Loki smiled and Frigga pulled him into a hug. She knew he would need a lot of reassurance, and that words wouldn't be enough. But they were a start, and there would be plenty of time to make sure he and Thor both understood they would not be pushed aside to make room for their new brother. For this Frigga also knew, through magic she couldn't explain, just as she'd known with Thor. She was expecting a boy.

_M & M_

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_M & M_

"You were saying something earlier about a project for your studies. Something you needed your father's and my help with?" Frigga asked a few minutes later.

"Oh, I forgot! We have to research and present a report on some part of the Ice War. And I thought, especially since Thor…well, since he can't go outside very much, that we should make it more fun and put together a drama. We're going to re-enact the final battle between Father and King Laufey. And we want to plan it with weapons like they really used, and…what?"

Frigga knew her face had paled and she hadn't hidden her dismay. She took a quick breath and tried to clear her expression. "I would rather you not do that."

"Why not?"

"I don't want you and your brother playacting something that was so real. And so painful."

"But Father won. What's so painful about it? Besides, it was ages ago. What's the big deal?"

Frigga gave a rueful little laugh. "It wasn't ages ago. You're young, you don't remember it."

"How could I? It was already over when I was born."

"Yes, that's right. But that wasn't so long ago at all, Loki. It was a difficult time for me. It was difficult for all of us. I was alone, trying to balance ruling a realm and raising a baby, waiting for your father to come home. It's easy to look back on it as something glorious, but it was ugly. Terribly ugly."

"Well…you can help us make it more realistic, then. But…we just want to show that one battle. Not the whole war. Oh. Is it because of Father's eye?" Loki asked, remembering that his father had lost his eye near the end of the war. Loki had never known him to look any different, and it didn't bother him at all. But his mother had known him when he had two eyes. Maybe that was what was so terrible about it for her.

"No, it's not about his eye. It's…it's about the whole thing. The whole of a long and costly war. And…Loki, I…I don't want you pretending to be a Frost Giant."

"I'm not going to be a Frost Giant," Loki said, shaking his head. "I'm going to be Father, and Thor's going to be King Laufey."

"_Thor_ agreed to play Laufey?"

"He hasn't agreed yet. I haven't even told him yet. But he will." Loki gave a sly smile, full of the promise of mischief. "We have an agreement."

Frigga wanted to say something more, to somehow put an end to this, but her sons had grown up with tales of this war and she knew it was inevitable no matter what she said. "Frost Giants versus Aesir" was a popular mock battle among all the boys of Asgard. It was unrealistic of her to expect anything different from her own sons, and in fact she'd already come across them carrying out this battle several times, but had always managed to redirect their energy when she realized what was going on. She wondered about this "agreement" as well, but decided it was something between brothers and she should perhaps not interfere. "Do I want to know, Loki?" she finally asked.

He hesitated and pressed his lips together to one side while his eyes lifted up and to the left; she could tell he was doing it purely for dramatic effect. "Probably not."

Frigga sighed and shook her head but let it go.

Loki knew Thor would agree to his plan, but he did wonder how long he'd be able to get his way in everything before Thor started responding with his fists. "Will you help us, then? You can practice with us," he said, turning back to the matter at hand.

"Mmmm, in this case, no, I'm sorry, I don't think I can, Loki. But your father probably will. If he makes it out of his battle with Thor. You can ask him when they get back."

Loki nodded. They sat there a while in silence, and Loki wondered just how long it would be before they did come back. And then he recalled he still had that _other_ question to ask his father, about why the Ice War started. It wasn't always easy to get time with his father. He was the king, the All-Father, and he was always busy. He fixed his eyes on the door his father and brother had gone through. _He isn't too busy for Thor_, he thought, remembering the last few days. His father had drawn Thor aside, included him on things Loki was excluded from. And then, when they both got punished, Thor got the worst of it – as he should have – but still got to stay by Father's side, while Loki was again excluded from it all. He blinked heavily as events suddenly fell into place in a new way before his eyes. _Thor_ had gotten him excluded. _Thor _had gotten him drunk on purpose. _Thor_ knew he didn't want to be left out; Loki had told him so. _Thor_ hadn't come to tell him what was going on, and had let him make a fool of himself in front of Father, while _Thor_ stood there in the thick of things about to meet with King Gullveig. _Thor_ had betrayed him, from start to finish. And his father didn't seem to mind.

He took a shaky breath as his mother stroked his hair, oblivious to the turn his thoughts had taken.

Loki had only one question on his mind now. _Did he do it _all_ on purpose?_ His stomach knotted painfully at the thought.

He wasn't able to dwell on it for long, though.

"Loki, I need help!" Thor shouted, bursting into the room, sword in hand and at the ready.

Loki shot out of his seat, eyes wide, heart pounding. "What happened?!"

"Hergils said he has to defend the king or he wouldn't be First Palace Einherjar anymore. I need you to distract him so I can go after Father. Come on!"

Quickly realizing there was no actual emergency, Loki hesitated about as long as it took to blink, his question already forgotten, his anxiety along with it. He glanced back at his mother.

"Go," she said with a smile on her lips and laughter in her eyes. "Take the sword in the antechamber, the one in honor of your birth. But treat your father fairly if you defeat him."

Loki nodded eagerly and Thor fled the room; Loki took off after him full of enthusiasm, barely breaking stride to wrench the sword free of its scabbard before going on the attack. Defeating a king would be a grand adventure indeed.

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M & M

The End

Or...More Accurately...To Be Continued in Approximately One Thousand Years


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